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UNITED STATES 
OF EUROPE 

ON THE EVE OF THE 

PARLIAMENT 

OF PEACE 



W. T. STEAD 




NEW YORK. 

DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE CO. 

1899 

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Copyright, 1899, by 
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PREFACE 

In the year 1898 two strange things happened. It 
is difficult to say which was more unexpected. 

In the West the American Republic, which for more 
than a hundred years had made as its proudest boast 
its haughty indifference to the temptation of territorial 
conquest, suddenly abjured its secular creed, and con- 
cluded a war upon which it had entered with every 
protestation of absolute disinterestedness by annexa- 
tions so sweeping as to invest the United States with 
all that was left of the heritage of imperial Spain. 

In the East a Sovereign autocrat, commanding the 
bayonets of four millions of trained soldiers and the 
implicit obedience of one hundred and twenty millions 
of loyal subjects, amazed and bewildered mankind by 
formally and publicly arraigning the armaments of 
the modern world, and summoning a Conference of all 
the Powers to discuss practical measures for abating 
an evil which threatened to land civilized society in 
the abyss. 

Many other things happend in 1898, but nothing 
for a moment to compare with the significance of these 
two immense events, which, each in its own way, con- 
stitute landmarks in the evolution of the human race. 



vi PREFACE 

The Peace Rescript of the Tsar of Russia, the Treaty 
of Peace extorted at the sword's point from prostrate 
Spain — these two strongly contrasted documents con- 
stitute together one of the paradoxes of History. It 
is the pacific Republic which makes war, which multi- 
plies its army fourfold, and which seizes by the right 
of conquest the colonial possessions of Spain. It is 
the Imperial autocrat of a military empire who im- 
\ peaches the war system of the world, and, himself the 
master of a thousand legions, invites the nations to a 
Parliament of Peace. 

It is not surprising that a contrast so startling, an 
exchange of roles so unexpected, should at once arrest 
and bewilder the contemporary observer. We are 
still too near this great transformation scene ade- 
quately to realize its full significance. 

In order better to ascertain what might be the true 
meaning and vital import of the sudden apparition of 
an industrial Commonwealth as a conquering and an- 
nexing Imperial power, and the not less startling ap- 
parition of the Tsar of Russia in the garb of an angel 
of peace, I undertook a rapid journey round Europe 
in the autumn of 1898, for the twofold purpose of 
ascertaining what the men of the Old World thought 
of the latest development of the New World, and of 
discovering the true inwardness of the Tsar's Rescript, 
and the degree of welcome which it was likely to re- 
ceive from the peoples to whom it was addressed. 

I left London on September 15th for Brussels, and 
visited in rapid succession Liege, Paris, Berlin, St. 



PREFACE vii 

Petersburg, Moscow, Sebastopol and Yalta. At Yalta 
I had the honor of being twice received by the Tsar 
at Livadia. Returning to Sebastopol, I took the 
steamer to Constantinople. The Orient Express 
brought me to Sofia, the capital of the Principality 
of Bulgaria, from whence I passed by Belgrade and 
Buda Pesth to Vienna. From Vienna, I went by 
Florence to Rome. On my way home I called at 
Cannes, Geneva and Berne, revisiting Paris on No- 
vember 26th, and reaching London on November 
28th. 

In one respect I was advantageously placed for hear- 
ing the views of trained and experienced observers. 
Most travellers consider themselves lucky if they can 
count upon the assistance of one Ambassador in each 
country which they visit. I, fortunately, can always 
call upon three. Born in Britain, and carrying on 
business in America, I found myself equally at home 
in the British and American Embassies; while Russia 
has so long been to- me as a second country, that her 
Ambassadors were at least as helpful as those of the 
English-speaking nations. 

Besides these official representatives, I naturally 
found myself everywhere at home with the unofficial 
ambassadors of the public, who, under the unassuming 
guise of newspaper correspondents, do much more to 
form the opinion of the civilized world than all the 
ambassadors, ministers, and plenipotentiaries put to- 
gether. Without their aid, generously afforded me 
wherever I went, it would have been idle to attempt 



viii PREFACE 

such a rapid survey of the Continent as I venture to 
present in these pages. 

It. would be the maddest presumption to pretend 
that in a rush round Europe, begun and completed in 
less than three months, anything can be obtained be- 
yond a series of general impressions, instantaneous 
photographs as it were, of the ever-shifting panorama 
of Continental politics. But on the two points to 
which I specially addressed myself it is perhaps not 
too much to hope that I may at least have succeeded 
in bringing into clear relief the salient features of 
the situation. Everywhere I asked what the men of 
the Old World thought of the newest New World that 
had suddenly revealed itself beyond the seas. Every- 
where also I asked what about the Peace Conference 
to which the world had been summoned by the Tsar. 
Incidentally, of course, I treat upon many other sub- 
jects, but the answers to these inquiries form the 
central essence of this book. 

I have drawn freely upon the letters and articles 
which in the course of my tour I contributed to the 
Daily News, the Associated Press of America, and the 
Review of Reviews. 

In conclusion, I may take the opportunity of an- 
nouncing that should this Annual meet with public 
appreciation, I hope to begin with the twentieth cen- 
tury a series of Annuals which would provide the gen- 
eral reader with a more or less comprehensive survey 
of the movements of the twelvemonth, written from 
a special standpoint after personal converse with the 



PREFACE ix 

sovereigns and statesmen, the diplomatists and jour- 
nalists of Europe. Of year-books of the statistical and 
dry-as-dust order there are enough and to spare. But 
of Annuals written to be read, and not merely to be 
referred to, I do not know of one. 

WILLIAM T. STEAD. 



Review of Reviews Office, 
Mowbray House, Norfolk Street, London, W.C. 
January 1st, 1899. 



THE UNITED STATES OF 
EUROPE 

PART I 

TOWARDS THE FEDERATION OF TEE WORLD 

CHAPTER I 

U.S.A. AND TJ.S.E. 

" The United States of Europe " is a phrase natu- 
rally suggested by the United States of America. 
The latter enables the former to be at least thinkable. 
For a hundred years the world has been familiarized 
with the spectacle of a continually increasing number 
of independent and sovereign States living together 
in federal union. An experiment which has lasted 
so long, and which on the whole has borne such good 
fruits, naturally suggests the question whether a sim- 
ilar arrangement may not be the ultimate solution of 
many of the problems which perplex us in the Old 
World. It is true that the United States of America 
have not survived their century without at least one 

1 



2 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

bloody war. But although for four years the Repub- 
lic trod knee-deep in the winepress of the wrath of 
God, the Union emerged from that ordeal not merely 
no weaker, but infinitely stronger than before. The 
war that saved the Union was infinitely more impor- 
tant because it secured the unity of the American 
State, than even because it indirectly effected the 
emancipation of the negro. For it was the preserva- 
tion of the Union which enabled the Americans to 
escape the blighting curse of the Armed Peace against 
which Europe is at last beginning to rise in revolt. 
Thus the United States of Europe, the United States 
of America, and the Tsar's Rescript are all bound to- 
gether much more closely than might at first sight 
have been imagined. The United States of America, 
because they are united, have succeeded down to the 
present year in maintaining peace and order through- 
out their vast territories, and in building up one of 
the greatest of world-powers, not merely without any 
resort to conscription, but even without any standing 
army at all. 

It will be objected that, down to the outbreak of 
the recent war, the Americans had what was called 
a standing army. What they had was 25,000 Federal 
gendarmes — a force not twice as large as the total 
number of the London Metropolitan Constabulary. 
ISTow a force of 25,000 men in a nation of seventy 
millions can hardly be regarded as other than the 
sceptre of sovereign power wielded by the Federal 
Executive, a sceptre rather than a sword, the symbol 



U.S.A. AND U.S.E. 3 

of sovereignty rather than the instrument by which 
it can be exerted. The collapse of the great Rebel- 
lion, the extinction of the attempt to found a slave 
Republic in the Southern States, enabled the Ameri- 
cans to escape the plague of hostile frontiers. Being 
united in a fraternal and federal Republic, they have 
had no occasion to build fortresses or to create forti- 
fied camps, nor have they, even in their nightmares, 
dreamed of subjecting the whole of their able-bodied 
youth to the enforced slavery of compulsory military 
service. Had the Confederacy triumphed, all this 
would have been altered, and two rival republics would 
have confronted each other north and south of a geo- 
graphical line which would have bristled with bay- 
onets and frowned with cannon. The secret of their 
deliverance from this plague of the Old World must 
be found in the preservation of their Union. 

It is therefore natural, when the young War Lord of 
the greatest of European armies issued his memorable 
indictment of the armed system of the Old World, 
that Europeans should turn their eyes with wistful 
longing to the continent which has hitherto been im- 
mune to militarism, and which has exhibited to the 
world the greatest example of disarmament on record. 
Nor is it surprising, perceiving the open secret of the 
way in which the Americans have escaped the worst 
forms of the malady which is eating out the vitals of 
the modern State, that dwellers in the Old World 
should begin to ask themselves anxiously whether or 
not the ultimate solution of the problem which will 



THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 



be considered by the Peace Conference is to be found 
in the realization of the conception which has hitherto 
been confined to idealists like Victor Hugo or seers like 
Mazzini. In other words, the summoning of the Par- 
liament of Peace brings us within sight, if not within 
hailing distance, of the recognition of the United 
States of Europe. 

Such at least was the idea which, in the autumn of 
1898, led me to undertake for the first time a tour of 
the new Continental Commonwealth in posse, with 
the twofold object — first, of seeing by personal experi- 
ence how far the nations and states were already for 
practical purposes welded into one; and secondly, dis- 
covering how far public opinion in the various capitals 
was prepared to welcome the next step which it was 
proposed to take in the direction of settled peace. 

On the day before I started from London, Mr. Neaf , 
the European editor of the Associated Press — that 
organization which, from its hold on the newspapers 
of the United States, may be regarded as the keeper 
of the ear of Uncle Sam — asked me whether I would 
write him a letter from each of the capitals I visited, 
describing what the Old World thought of the newest 
evolution of the Xew World — the sudden flaming up 
of American enthusiasm on behalf of the victims of 
Spanish oppression, and the consequent expansion of 
the boundaries of the American Commonwealth. 
Closely allied with this evolution of American Im- 
perialism was the apparition of the United States as an 
active competitor in the neutral markets of the world. 



U.S.A. AND U.S.E. 5 

I accepted the commission, and the contents of this 
volume are necessarily more or less influenced by the 
double task to which I addressed myself. At the 
same time I venture to hope that the very complexity 
of the study will add somewhat to the interest of the 
book. 

From one point of view Europe contemplates the 
United States of America as having realized the ideal 
towards which the Rescript of the Tsar appears ulti- 
mately to point. On the other hand, Europe perceives 
the United States devoting themselves to a war of 
liberation, which, according to the familiar precedent, 
appeared to develop into a war of conquest; while 
simultaneously the American producer, already su- 
preme in the supply of produce of the soil, suddenly 
reveals himself as a formidable rival in all manner 
of manufactured goods. This last factor in the prob- 
lem, although regarded (as Count Goluchowsky pub- 
licly declared) with consternation and alarm, counts 
nevertheless as a very valuable element in the forces 
making for peace and disarmament. It brings home 
to the average man the enormous advantages in in- 
dustrial competition which are enjoyed by a nation 
that is free to devote the whole of its inventive capacity 
to the arts of production, and to pass the whole of its 
youth into the factory and the mill, without previously 
taking tithe of their years in the heavy corvee of the 
barracks. Thus at the same time that the United 
States of America afford the disunited States of 
Europe the spectacle of a great nation, orderly and 



6 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

free, which has grown up to greatness without any 
more than a mere symbol of an army, the menacing 
ascendancy of the American producer in the markets 
of the world tends to drive the lesson home that the 
ways of militarism are the ways of death. In the 
long run it may he found that the phenomenal increase 
of American exports in the year 1898 may do more to 
induce the acceptance of the Russian Emperor's pro- 
posals than all the appeals of the moralists and all the 
arguments of the philanthropists. 

" This is the way: walk ye in it," is the word uttered 
from the Imperial throne of Muscovy, while from 
across the Atlantic comes as a deep response — " And 
if ye do not walk in it, ye will assuredly die." Die — 
not necessarily by the sword, but by the absolute in- 
ability of nations, weighed down with the ever-increas- 
ing burden of modern armaments, to compete with 
their disencumbered rivals. England, France, Ger- 
many and Italy have been desperately struggling for 
some years past to obtain possession of unopened mar- 
kets. They have spent millions like water in order 
to secure prior rights over great expanses of African 
and Asiatic territory which are only prospective mar- 
kets at the best; and all the while they have ignored 
the fact that they are in imminent danger of losing 
control of their own market, and that while they may 
gain a more or less doubtful chance of a turnover of 
hundreds of thousands in distant continents, the in- 
crease of American exports to the European market is 
to be reckoned every year by millions. This economic 



U.S.A. AND U.S.E. 7 

portent, to which for the moment the public turns a 
blind eye, will every day more and more assert itself, 
and more and more tend to compel the Old World to 
adopt the New World conditions, or to give up the 
struggle. What are the New World conditions? 
They are these — all the States dwell together in Fede- 
ral Union, without hostile frontiers and without stand- 
ing armies, and with a greater expenditure upon edu- 
cation than upon armaments. There are other factors 
in the problem, no doubt; these are the chief. We 
in the Old World cannot hope to rival the vast re- 
sources of a continent which even now is but partially 
developed; but the fact that we are naturally handi- 
capped in competing with the virgin resources of the 
New World renders it all the more necessary that we 
should disembarass ourselves of all the artificial im- 
pediments which render it difficult, not to say impos- 
sible, for us to hold our own in the struggle for exist- 
ence in the markets of the world. The United States 
of Europe, therefore, however remote it may appear 
to those who look merely at the surface of things, may 
be much nearer than even the most sanguine amongst 
us venture at present to hope. 



CHAPTER II. 



LINKS AND BARRIERS. 



A tour round Europe seemed to me the most natu- 
ral way of bringing forcibly to my mind a sense of 
the factors which impede this natural development. 
The problem can be approached from many points of 
view, and studied in many ways; but I elected to 
choose the simple method of going round Europe to 
see places and things for myself at first hand, and to 
form some kind of an idea as to what were the forces 
making for union, and what were those which tended 
to make the adoption of the federal principle difficult 
or impossible. 

To begin with, it is impossible not to be impressed 
with the contrast between Europe to-day and Europe 
a few centuries ago. Five hundred years ago it would 
have been practically impossible for me to have made 
the circular tour from which I have just returned. In 
the first place, the countries through which I passed 
would not have been at peace one with the other; in 
the second place, I should have had great difficulty in 
obtaining permission to cross many frontiers, and 
thirdly, I should in some countries have been in im- 
minent danger of losing my life, or at least mv libertv. 
8 



LINKS AND BARRIERS v 

Last year Europe was in profound peace. There was 
no difficulty whatever in crossing any frontier, nor 
did I experience any more risk to life or liberty in 
travelling through the Continent than I should have 
done in making a tour round Kent, or passing from 
jSfew York to San Francisco. For traA r elling purposes 
Europe is already a commonwealth. But there are 
two relics of barbarism still remaining which compel 
the wayfaring man to admit the existence of inde- 
pendent, rival, or hostile States. The first is common 
to all countries; the second is confined to one or two. 
The first is a custom-house. But for the pestilent 
nuisance of the douane, the tourist could go from the 
North Cape to Gibraltar, from Cape Finisterre to 
Transylvania, without ever being aware that he was 
passing from one jurisdiction to another. The uni- 
forms of the police and of the soldiery differ somewhat, 
but so also do the features of the landscape. Person- 
ally he would experience no more inconvenience in 
passing from France to Germany or from Belgium to 
Holland, than he would from passing from New York 
into Pennsylvania, or from Illinois into Minnesota. 
The second obstacle which stands in the way of this 
continental unity is the maintenance in the two coun- 
tries of Russia and the Ottoman Empire of the system 
of the passport. This passport — a nuisance at one 
time almost universal — has gradually retreated east- 
wards, imtil now no one ever asks to look at your pass- 
port outside Russia and Turkey. It is not very pleas- 
ant for a Russian or a friend of Russia to have to 



10 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

bracket the two countries together; but in this matter 
of passports they are much of a muchness, Russia per- 
haps being even the worse of the two. Without a 
passport duly vised by Russian consular authorities, 
no foreigner can pass into the Russian Empire. With- 
out that passport duly surrendered to the police at 
each town where he arrives, no foreigner can take up 
his abode in Russia. The same thing is true to a less 
extent in Turkey. These two countries, therefore, 
are outside the pale of passportless civilization. They 
belong to the States which, for domestic or other rea- 
sons, dare not make their territories free to mankind 
to come and to go. The United States of Europe, 
therefore, is as the United States of America in three 
parts of its surface, so far as travelling is concerned, 
plus the iritating reminder by the custom-house of 
the existence of frontiers; while over the rest of its 
surface it is as the United States of America, plus the 
custom-house and the passport. 

The great ideal of international freedom and union 
is to be found in the post-office. Wherever you see 
the red pillar-box, there you see a dumb prophet of 
the Millennium. The moment the stamped missive 
enters its ever open portal it becomes a citizen of the 
universe, free from all custom houses, and protected, 
by virtue of the Queen's head which it carries, in all 
lands, irrespective of differences of nationality, law 
and religion. The International Postal Union is tho 
avant-courier or John the Baptist of the Kingdom of 
Heaven, in which all frontiers would disappear and 







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THE tJ.S.E. AND THE U.S.A. 



LINKS AND BARRIERS H 

all mankind would be made free of the planet in which 
they dwell. Often on my journey I witnessed, with 
a feeling of satisfaction not untinged with envy, the 
way in which the mail-bags were carried across the 
frontier without word or question, while we luckless 
ones, who were not franked with a postage stamp, had 
to laboriously carry our luggage to the Zollhaus and 
wait until the custom-house official had made a more 
or less perfunctory examination of our belongings. It 
is true that the customs examination was in most cases 
exceedingly formal; in some, as in Switzerland, and 
in coming back to England, it was the merest form. 
But this only increases your irritation at the exasperat- 
ing worry and delay occasioned by a formality so mani- 
festly futile. How often did I sigh for the adoption 
of Sir Algernon West's sensible proposal, by which 
all the nuisance of custom-house examination was 
to be done away with — at least between England and 
France. But although it is nearly two years since 
he made his excellent suggestion, nothing seems as yet 
to have come of it. 

The only other institution in Europe which can be 
compared to the post-office for the success with which 
it has triumphed over the limitations of frontiers and 
the restrictions imposed by short-sighted governments 
upon the free movement of men and things, is that 
marvellous agency by which it is possible for the trav- 
eller, with the aid of Circular Notes, to draw whatever 
money he requires wherever he may be. I never used 
to cash my Circular Notes without feeling a dumb 



12 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

wonder at the marvellous ingenuity of man and the 
skill with which he is able to do all things, if only 
" there is money in it." Instead of having to carry 
round with me a pocketful of gold, I simply took in 
my pocket-book a bundle of Circular Notes, utterly 
valueless to any one who had not got the circular 
which must be produced whenever they were cashed. 
Armed with these bits of paper, I found in every 
capital, one, or two, or sometimes three financial in- 
stitutions which were ready at a moment's notice to 
pay me down as much money as the Circular Notes 
represented, without any deduction or trouble what- 
ever. You give no notice, but simply walk into the 
office, announce that you want so much money, and 
present notes for the amount required. In five or 
ten minutes the money is handed to you, calculated 
carefully at the current rate of exchange of the day, 
and you depart, feeling impressed with the perfection 
of the organization of credit by which at a thousand 
different points in your journey, not in Europe only, 
but in other continents, you can convert a bit of paper, 
valueless to any one else, into gold, by producing it 
and the corresponding circular in any of the agencies 
in connection with the central office. If, after the 
fashion of Orientals, you converted your cash into 
precious stones, you would only be allowed to enter 
the country after having paid tax and toll to the cus- 
tom-house; but thanks to the Circular Note you can 
snap your fingers at this institution, and cash your 
notes in a kingdom where no custom-house officer can 



LINKS AND BARRIERS 13 

interfere. The Circular Note is the nearest approach 
to an international currency which we have arrived at, 
for unlike coins of the realm, Circular Notes are con- 
vertible in every land and at the full current rate of 
exchange. 

I was exceedingly fortunate in being saved the diffi- 
culties of the two worst custom-houses through which 
I had to pass. I had a laissez-passer from the Russian 
Embassy, which cleared me from all the inquisition 
at Wirballen. Thanks to the timely kindness of M. 
Kroupensky, who has now succeeded M. Pavloff at 
Pekin, I was able to evade the Turkish custom-house 
altogether, as I landed from the Sebastopol steamer 
in the Eussian guard-boat. Only once was there a 
question of paying as much as a single penny on my 
luggage. I had bought a Bulgarian peasant dress for 
my daughter, and narrowly escaped having to pay 
duty upon it as wearing apparel not for my own use, 
when I crossed the frontier from Servia into Hungary ; 
but the custom-house officer was merciful, although 
he mildly lamented that I had not sent it through 
nnder seal. But from first to last, in a tour round 
an oval which had London and Sebastopol as its two 
extreme points, I had much less inconvenience from 
the custom house than what one hundred years ago I 
should have experienced in passing from Rotterdam 
to Vienna. It may be difficult to see how the custom- 
house is to be finally abolished, but already its incon- 
veniences are minimized; and if the douane does not 
bear in its visage the evidence of galloping consump- 



14 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

tion, it seems to be in a decline which, under the 
impulse of modern ideas, will probably be accelerated. 

As for passports, that is a more difficult question. 
Certainly in Turkey and in the states, such as Servia 
and Bulgaria, which hare been carved out of the ruins 
of the Ottoman Empire, the utility of the passport is 
not very obvious. Whether it can be dispensed with 
in Russia is a matter upon which a non-Russian is not 
competent to express an opinion. The utility of the 
passport from the point of view of keeping out danger- 
ous characters or inconvenient visitors is not very 
obvious to the stranger, who soon discovers that the 
people whom it is sought to keep out are always those 
who have their passports in the most splendid order. 
Of course there is a great deal to be said in favor of 
a system by which no person can move a step without 
an authentic document duly certifying who he is, and 
where he comes from, and all about him; but in prac- 
tice the passport system falls far short of this ideal. 
Those persons who have least reputation have the most 
passports, and the less regular a man may be in his 
life, the more scrupulous he is that there shall be no 
complaint as to the regularity of his official papers. 
T am not, however, either defending or complaining 
of what exists. I am only endeavoring to explain 
what are those things which differentiate the United 
States of Europe from the United States of America. 

When we leave those elements which tend to dis- 
union and come to consider those which tend to bring 
about the formation of the United States of Europe, 



LINKS AND BARRIERS 15 

it will be a surprise to some that the institution of 
monarchy holds a high place. We are so much under 
the influence of the poetry and political writing of 
generations when wars were common, that it is diffi- 
cult for us to understand that the world has changed 
since then. The poetry of the beginning of the cen- 
tury had as its not the assumption that the wars which 
afflicted mankind were the direct product of the rapa- 
city of monarchs. The " monarch-murdered soldier " 
was an excellent phrase, which has been carried down 
for generations. When Byron describes the innocent 
mirth of a Spanish festival, he cannot refrain from 
exclaiming : — 

" Oh', monarchs! could ye taste the mirth ye mar, 
Not in the toils of glory would yet sweat, 
The hoarse dull drum ould sleep, and man be happy yet." 

That superstition as to the war-making influence of 
monarchy dies hard; but if we look at things as they 
are, there is very little room for continuing to cherish 
the delusion that blinds us to the real sources of the 
perils which menace the peace of the world. Of this I 
was continually being reminded in my journey round 
Europe. 

The day I arrived at Brussels was the day on which 
the memorial mass was being said for the Empress- 
Queen, Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary. Her death by 
the knife of the assassin placed one-half of Europe in 
mourning; and the death of the Queen of Denmark, 
which occurred immediately afterwards, was even 



16 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

more widely felt. The death of " the grandmamma 
of Europe," as she was familiarly called, was incident- 
ally the cause of delaying the publication of this 
" Christmas Annual " until the month of March. Her 
daughter, the Dowager Empress of Russia, wished to 
have her son, the Emperor Nicholas, at the funeral. 
This compelled him to leave Livadia, cross Russia, and 
repair to Copenhagen, where he remained for a fort- 
night. My interview was therefore postponed until 
his return. These are only trifles, but they serve as 
reminders of the closeness of the family tie which 
unites one country with the other. Our own royal 
family has ramifications which cover Europe. The 
Emperor of Russia and the Emperor of Germany are 
both nephews of the Prince of Wales, whose brother- 
in-law is the King of Greece, and whose son-in-law 
will be King of Roumania. 

If the ultimate ideal of Europe is to become one 
family without any barriers separating one from the 
other — a family, all the members of which are famil- 
iar enough to be interested in each other's affairs, to 
attend each other's weddings, to go into mourning for 
each other's deaths — then Royalty has attained what 
the rest of mankind will only attain after some cen- 
turies. The monarchical families form a group which, 
from a physical and physiological point of view, is 
even too closely united. Marrying in-and-in has con- 
sequences which are not by any means calculated to 
contribute to the robustness or to the intellectual vigor 
of the stock. Indeed, one eminent man, whom I 



LINKS AND BARRIERS 17 

heard at Rome, is devoting no end of time and atten- 
tion to a demonstration of the thesis that all dynasties 
are dying out, and must die out by the nature of things 
and by the law of the universe. It may be so, but the 
process is a slow one, and they will not perish before 
they have familiarized mankind with the spectacle of 
an international family group, speaking practically a 
common language, having common interests, and 
capable of understanding each other from the in- 
side. 

Signor Sonnino, with whom I had a long, interesting 
conversation at Rome, told me that he considered the 
coming century would be a monarchical century, and 
that that monarchical principle, which had been some- 
what depressed since the days of the French Revolu- 
tion, was destined to be re-vindicated in the years that 
are to come. However that may be, there is no doubt 
that our Queen by the vigor of her intellect, the keen- 
ness of the interest which she has taken in public af- 
fairs, the marvellous memory with which she has been 
blessed, and her strong sense of the obligations of 
family relationship, has done much to re-establish the 
monarchical idea. Her correspondence with the mem- 
bers of the royal caste or royal family throughout 
Europe is, and has always been, carefully kept up. 
Hence, all monarchical States have at their head a 
semi-cosmopolitan European family, capable of acting 
as a telephonic system for the Continent. 

France, which is outside this royal ring, may have 
her compensations elsewhere, but she certainly suffers 



18 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

deprivations in the lack of continuity of tradition, and 
of the permanence of persons who direct her policy. 
The uneasy consciousness of this is one of the causes, 
when the compensating advantages of the Republic 
seem to fade away, which leads to the perpetual re- 
newal of the talk of Restoration, even after thirty 
years of the third Republic. 

Whether we regard the recrudescence of monarchy 
as a symptom of reaction or as a sign of progress, there 
is no doubt as to its existence. What we have to do 
is to make the most of it and to recognize in what way 
it makes for progress. 

After Royalty, it is probable that the most potent 
things tending to make Europeans conscious of the 
unity of the Continental Commonwealth are the tele- 
graphic agencies, such as Reuter's, the Havas, and 
others, which, chiefly through the daily papers, con- 
tinually distribute the political and social gossip of the 
Continent among the nations. Let no one overlook 
the value of gossip in the formation of the ties which 
bind men together. Take away family gossip, and 
the family would in most cases become a mere skele- 
ton, without flesh, blood or nervous system. It is by 
the kindly gossip of the fireside, in which every one 
talks about everybody else, that the sense of family 
union is created and preserved. The chatterers of the 
telegraph who, in every capital, carefully extract the 
kernel of grain from the bushel of chaff, and telegraph 
all round the Continent such items of intelligence as 
may be of general interest, contribute probably the 



LINKS AND BARRIERS 19 

most constantly potent influence that can be discov- 
ered in the growth of that common sentiment which 
is the precursor of common action in support of the 
Commonwealth. Great and ubiquitous is the tele- 
graphic agency. Our fathers used to think that the 
newspaper represented the highest organized intelli- 
gence, seeking day and night for information with 
which to feed its ever hungry press. But no news- 
paper, not even the Times itself, can bear comparison 
with the telegraphic agencies, such as Keuter's, the 
Havas, and the Associated Press, for the collection and 
distribution of intelligence. Every great newspaper 
is more than a collector of news: it is always a com- 
mentator, and usually a preacher of its own ideas. A 
telegraphic agency is neither of these things, and dis- 
seminates news only. It is creedless alike in polities 
and in religion. Its sole duty is to see the nuggetty 
fact in the amount of dross brought to surface by the 
illimitable labor of the human race, and promptly to 
put that nuggetty fact into general circulation. 
Hence, no river can burst its dam in Northern Italy, 
or in remoter Koumania, and sweep away any appre- 
ciable number of the human race to a watery death, 
but the fact is served up the next morning at all the 
breakfast tables of the Continent. And here again 
the Royalties, in addition to the service which they 
render to unity by the creation of a family that is prac- 
tically co-extensive with the Continent, are hardly less 
useful in the supply of that personal gossip which is 
always most appreciated by the average man and 



20 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

woman. The birth and the death, the betrothal and 
the marriage, the accident, and even the scandals of 
the Royal caste, are all food for gossip; and in this 
fashion the telegraph wire and the Royal and Im- 
perial dynasties act and react upon each other. The 
King of Lilliput cannot sprain his ankle without the 
fact being a subject for comment and of interest 
throughout the whole Continental area. A thousand 
greater men than he might break their necks with- 
out the fact being considered of sufficient interest 
to be chronicled. Therein consists the superior 
utility of the Kingdom of Lilliput. Thrones are but 
pedestals on which human beings stand visibjy above 
the crowd, and therefore objects of more general 
human interest than any of the undistinguished mass 
below. 

The railway and the telegraph are both becoming 
more and more international institutions. There are 
still, no doubt, shreds of nationalism left in the man- 
agement of the telegraphs of the world, but on the 
whole they tend more and more to become a common 
nerve-centre of the whole human race. But the rail- 
way and telegraph are subjects which must be dealt 
with in a separate chapter. 

There is a steady approximation to unity through- 
out the Continent. We have not yet a European coin- 
age, but throughout the Latin countries there is an 
international currency, and sooner or later Europe will 
have a common currency. 

The railways and the telegraphs are inventions of 



LINKS AND BARRIERS 21 

this century, and they have, therefore, adapted them- 
selves, almost from the outset, to the complex circum- 
stances of their environment. 

It is different with the great rivers of Europe, which 
were international highways long before Watt and 
Stephenson taught steam to do the haulage of the 
world, or electricians harnessed the lightning as the 
Hermes of the modern Olympus. All the traffic upon 
such great arterial waterways of the Continent as the 
Rhine and the Danube has long been subject to in- 
ternational control and regulation. At this point we 
reach a further stage in the evolution of the United 
States of Europe. In the case of the railways it may 
be regarded to a great extent as unconscious, inasmuch 
as the International Railway Bureau has no direct con- 
nection with the Foreign Offices of the world. It is 
different with the Riverain Commissions. The navi- 
gation of the Danube is indeed one of the most inter- 
esting illustrations of the way in which the European 
Powers modify the machinery of their joint action for 
the purpose of securing efficiency of working. At the 
outset, the River Danube was under the control of 
the six great Powers and Turkey. But the practical 
management of the river now is intrusted to a com- 
mission of the Riverain States, plus one delegate from 
the great Powers. That is to say, the International 
Danube is managed by a committee of five, one dele- 
gate being appointed for six months by each of the 
great Powers in turn, while there are four permanent 
delegates appointed by the Riverain States of Austria, 



22 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

Bulgaria, Rouniania and Servia. This is interesting 
in more ways than one, because it establishes the prin- 
ciple of the appointment of a European delegate on 
the principle of rotation. Each representative of the 
great Powers only holds his seat for six months, so that 
each great Power has only one turn in three years. 
The European delegate, however, although represent- 
ing his own State, is in reality the representative of 
the United States of Europe, and in that capacity de- 
fends the general interest, in case it should be attacked, 
in the interest of the Riverain States. 

Another principle which it embodies is that a great 
Power when it happens to have local interest is not 
debarred from having two representatives when its 
turn comes round to appoint a general delegate. 
Austria, for instance, has its permanent delegate, and 
once in three years it has a general representative as 
one of the Committee of the great Powers in the affairs 
of Europe. The third principle, we shall see, bears 
directly upon the question of the status of Bulgaria. 
According to the Treaty of Berlin, Bulgaria is part of 
the Ottoman Empire. It is a tributary State. Strictly 
speaking, it is the Sultan, and not the Prince of Bul- 
garia, who should nominate the delegate on the Danu- 
bian Commission, who represents the Riverain Prin- 
cipality. The Sultan, however, can only appoint a 
general delegate as one of the signatories of the Treaty 
of Berlin, while the right of Bulgaria to appoint its 
permanent representative on the Riverain Commission 
is recognized. Acting on this precedent, we shall find 



LINKS AND BARRIEBS 23 

that Bulgaria will expect to be represented at the 
Peace Conference, although it would, I believe, be 
the first occasion at which a tributary Principality 
has claimed to sit at the council-board with its own 
suzerain. 

From the regulation of international rivers on the 
Continent it is but a short step to the European Con- 
cert, which primarily exists for the safeguarding of 
that great international waterway known as the Bos- 
phorus and the Dardanelles. Reduced to its essence, 
this, and very little else but this, is the basis of the 
Concert of the Powers formally established by the 
Treaty of Paris in 1856, and asserted anew at the 
Berlin Congress of 1878. Behind all the fine prin- 
ciples which are invoked in the diplomatic instruments 
governing the complex congeries of problems known 
as the Eastern Question, the bedrock of the whole, the 
kernel, the central essence, is this supreme question 
as to the international regulation of the waterways 
connecting the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Be- 
cause the Turk squats astride of both sides of these 
famous Straits, the Turk has been a European interest 
for at least a century. He is no longer regarded as 
an exclusively British interest, but his charmed life 
is due to the fact that he is keeper of the Dardanelles 
and the Bosphorus, and in that capacity he possesses 
the merit of utility, which in the eye of many is more 
efficacious than charity in covering a multitude of 
sins. In order to deal with a question of such inter- 
national interest, international action was necessary. 



24 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

Hence the intervention of the principle of the Euro- 
pean Concert, that great and fertile principle which, 
more than anything else, holds within it the promise 
and potency of every form of international develop- 
ment. 



CHAPTEE III 

THE CAPITAL OF THE CONTINENT 

On returning from Home, at one time the capital of 
the world, and still the capital of that section of the 
Christian Church which recognizes in the Roman 
Bishop the successor of St. Peter, I made a detour in 
order to visit Berne, which is the nearest approxima- 
tion there is in Europe to a common capital. At Berne 
it was my good fortune to make the acquaintance of 
M. ]STuma Droz, the head of the International Railway 
Bureau, which is one of four international administra- 
tions that have their seats in the federal capital of 
Switzerland. M. Numa Droz is a very remarkable 
man, and I met no one in my tour whose conversation 
was at once so intelligent, so reasonable, and so hope- 
ful. A man still in the prime of life, he has served 
his country in almost every capacity, from the Presi- 
dent of the Republic downwards. When the Euro- 
pean Powers were puzzled as to the best international 
representative to nominate for the Governorship of 
Crete, their choice fell upon M. Droz, and afterwards, 
when the task of restoring order was entrusted to 
Prince George, it was again to M. Nimia Droz that 
they turned when they wished to provide a typical 

25 



26 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

sensible, trustworthy European to hold the balance 
even between the various interests in the island. A 
man of judicial temperament, with great administra- 
tive experience, M. Numa Droz is at once a patriotic 
Swiss and a broad-minded citizen of the world. 
Should he be selected as the representative of Switzer- 
land at the Conference of Peace, there w T ill be no dele- 
gate from any of the great Powers who will command 
greater respect or whose judgment will carry greater 
weight. 

In February last year M. Droz read a paper at a 
conference in Zurich, in which he described the organ- 
ization and the work of the international bureaus at 
Berne. It is one of the most interesting and sugges- 
tive papers that I came across in my run round Europe. 
In it he described with admirable perspicacity and 
brevity the rapid growth of these central bureaus, 
which are to the United States of Europe like the ice- 
crystals which form on the surface of the water before 
the cold is sufficiently intense to freeze the whole sur- 
face into one solid sheet. These international bureaus 
represent the evolution of what may be called the Con- 
tinental ganglia of nerve-centres, and each of them 
may be regarded as an embodied prophecy of the com- 
ing of the United States of Europe. And not only 
the United States of Europe, but the United States of 
the World. For the area which three of those admin- 
istrations represent is far wider than that of any single 
continent. As M. Droz said, there is no doubt that 
the formation of these international bureaus is one of 



THE CAPITAL OF THE CONTINENT 27 

the most interesting and hopeful signs of our epoch — 
that these international organizations have been cre- 
ated by the Governments in order to serve the ends 
of civilization. As a Switzer, M. Droz is naturally 
proud of the fact that four of these should have their 
head in the capital of his own country. There are 
other bureaus which have their seats elsewhere. For 
instance, the International Bureau of Metrical 
Weights and Measures is domiciled in Paris. The 
Bureau Geodesique is seated at Berlin, while at Brus- 
sels there are two international bureaus, one which 
arranges for the publication of the customs tariffs of 
all nations, and the other is concerned with the sup- 
pression of the slave-trade. But at Berne they glory 
in the possession of four, as many as are to be 
found in all the rest of the world put together. 
These are the bureaus of the International Postal 
Union, the Telegraphic Union, the Union of Inter- 
national Railways, and that which looks after Patents, 
Copyrights and Trade-marks, which are summed 
together under the common title of " Intellectual 
Property." 

•When we were children, we used to hear much con- 
cerning " Commerce, the white-winged peace-maker," 
and have only, after a series of disillusions, wakened 
to the fact that in the present day commerce has be- 
come the pretext, if not the cause, for most of our 
international quarrels. It is, therefore, with a pleas- 
ant surprise, such as one feels when discovering that 
a fairy-tale of the nursery had been but a poetic em- 



28 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

bodiment of a scientific fact, that we come upon the 
following passage in M. Droz's paper : — 

It is the chief glory of commerce to be the principal agent 
in drawing nations together. It is of no use to try to isolate 
them by making the walls of the custom-house as thick and 
as high as possible; trade has an expansive force and a 
subtle pervasiveness so great that in the end it always 
succeeds in overcoming or overthrowing these obstacles. 
It is useless to try to keep up with jealous and also legiti- 
mate solicitude the national spirit of each people; commerce 
knows how to combine the great interests which they have 
ini common, thanks to which all nations only form one 
universal family. As far as trade is concerned, diversity of 
language is no barrier, as they can be learned; distance is 
annihilated, or, at least, reduced to its narrowest limits. 
For the most part, trade asks little from the State, as it is 
accustomed to settle its own difficulties in its own way, 
and the State rather hinders it in its movements. But there 
are two things which it needs most certainly and most im- 
peratively; one is rapidity and exactitude in its relations, 
the other is legal security. 

Of these various bureaus, now located in what may 
be regarded as the incipient capital of the Continent, 
the first, which was established in 1865, related to 
telegraphs. The second was the Postal Union, which 
was established in 1874; while the bureau dealing with 
trade-marks and patents was founded in 1883, and 
its function was extended to deal with copyrights in 
1886. The International Railway Bureau, over which 
M. Droz presides, was the latest born of all, having 
only come into existence in 1890. The motive which 
led to the foundation of these bureaus was in all cases 
the same. Telegraphs, post-offices and railways had 



THE CAPITAL OF THE CONTINENT 29 

relations with each other before they established a 
common centre to act both as a clearing-house and as 
a supreme court of appeal for the settlement of their 
various differences, just in the same way as the present 
governments of Europe have relations with each 
other. But before the conventions establishing the 
bureaus were not established without considerable 
caused almost as many questions as those which at 
present exist between neighboring States in the polit- 
ical sphere. M. Droz says: — 

Letters used to pass from one administration to another, 
by each of which a tax was imposed, and this caused ex- 
pense and delay. It was the same witn telegraphic mes<- 
sages. There was no international protection for inventors, 
proprietors of trade-marks, or authors. And with regard 
to railway transport, new regulations were found at every 
frontier, the times of delivery were not the same, indem- 
nities in case of loss or damage depended on the caprice of 
officials; it was impossible to discover who was in fault, 
or against whom a charge could be made. It was the most 
utted juridical confusion. 

It is the difficulties of the world which pave the way 
for the solutions of its problems. But for our difficul- 
ties we should make no progress — a salutary doctrine 
which is a constant consolation to the reformer. These 
bureaus were not established without considerable 
misgivings, and even now, although they have func- 
tioned and functioned well for years, it is necessary for 
them to be very prudent, since the respective adminis- 
trations of the various States are as jealous of their 
autonomy and as prompt to resent any infringement 



30 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

of their sovereignty as if they were high contracting 
parties dealing with territorial or political rights. 
Nevertheless, they have managed in spite of those 
jealousies and misgivings to do very good work — do 
it so quietly that hardly any one knows it is being 
done at all. As all these bureaus are founded upon 
the same general principle, it is reasonable to expect 
that the United States of Europe will probably follow 
the same road in the evolution of the Continental 
organization. M. Droz says : — 

All the common features of these various Unions depend 
upon agreements, the wording of which is decided at con- 
ferences, partly technical and partly diplomatic, which meet 
from time to time to inquire into the changes and improve- 
ments which can be introduced! into the general regulations. 
All of them, with the exception of that which has to do with 
railway transport, are concluded for an unlimited period, 
and the States can accede to them or withdraw at any 
time, by a simple declaration made to the Swiss Federal 
Council. With regard to the railways, on the contrary, the 
length of time is from three years to three years, and the 
States may be consulted about the adhesion of new members. 
This last point is very important considering the interests 
which are at stake. It would not be desirable to have in the 
Union railways which are either insolvent, or belonging 
to countries whose law and whose law courts did not offer 
the most complete security. 

The cost of these international offices is very small. 
In 1896 the cost of the four was altogether only 370,- 
000 francs, or, let us say, £15,000, a sum which is 
divided proportionately among the various States. In 
the railways, for instance, the charge is based upon the 
number of kilometers under the control of the Con- 



TEE CAPITAL OF TEE CONTINENT 31 

vention. The importance and the nature of the func- 
tions of these international bureaus, which may be 
regarded as avant-couriers of the United States of 
Europe that is to come, may best be studied by briefly 
describing each of them with some detail. 

Beginning with the Telegraphic Bureau, M. Droz 
says:— 

The working agreement applies to forty-six countries, 
containing 846 millions of inhabitants. It requires that 
States should have a sufficient number of direct telegraphic 
lines, for international telegraphy; it recognizes the right of 
every person to make use of them; it guarantees the secrecy 
of all communications; it fixes the order of priority for the 
dispatch of telegrams, with regard to their nature; it 
authorizes the sending of messages in cipher; it settles a 
universal charge, which is based, for European countries, 
on groups of three, ten, or fifty words, and for lands beyond 
the ocean, on the single word; it accepts the franc as the 
unit of coinage; it undertakes to send rely-paid and regis- 
tered telegrams. 

The bureau has many duties. Its first task is to 
collect, to co-ordinate and to publish information of 
every kind relating to international telegraphy. In 
discharging this duty, it publishes a general map of 
all the great telegraphic communications of the world, 
and other maps more detailed, one for Europe and the 
other for the rest of the world outside of Europe. It 
publishes a telegraphic journal, and carefully edits and 
re-edits a list of the telegraph stations of the world. 
These stations now number 80,000, and as they are 
constantly changing, it is no wonder that the list is 
now in the sixth edition. This is not so heavy a task 



32 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

as that which is undertaken by the Postal Union Bu- 
reau, for there are 200,000 post-offices in the world. 
The bureau, therefore, it will be seen, acts as a kind 
of intelligence department for the telegraphs of the 
world. Incidentally the bureau has undertaken a task 
which, although a very long way removed from that 
of the construction of a cosmopolitan language, never- 
theless points in that direction. 

In passing on to the Postal Union, it is interesting 
to note that the formation of this International Bureau 
was first mooted by the United States of America even 
before their great Civil War was over. It is not less 
suggestive that the proposal, although made in 1863, 
led to no result beyond the publication of resolutions 
as to desiderata in postal administration which had no 
binding effect on any of the parties who took part in 
the Conference. Nevertheless, these desiderata being 
definitely formulated and agreed to as desirable by the 
representatives of the various Powers, a foundation 
was laid, upon which the Union was founded eleven 
years later. The first Postal Conference was held in 
Paris; the second, which was summoned on the initi- 
ative of Germany, met in Berne, where an inscription 
in black marble commemorates the signing of the Con- 
vention which established the 2|d. rate for all letters 
within the limits of the Postal Union. It marked the 
transition of an organization previously organized 
upon a particularist national basis to the wider and 
more rational status of a cosmopolitan institution. At 
the present moment the Postal Union includes fifty- 



THE CAPITAL OF THE CONTINENT 33 

nine States, or groups of colonial possessions, contain- 
ing, roughly stated, 1,000,000,000 inhabitants. The 
bureau serves as a clearing-house between the admin- 
istrations; it is perpetually engaged in settling dis- 
puted questions which arise and points as to the ques- 
tion of interpretation, and it also acts as a kind of arbi- 
tral judge on litigious questions between the various 
administrations. In this case also it is very important 
to note, with a view to the future international devel- 
opment of the United States of Europe, that it is pos- 
sible to refer questions to the bureau for its opinion 
without entering into any preliminary obligation to 
abide by its decision. 

The Administration which deals with " intellectual 
property " was founded by the Convention of Paris 
in 1883; and it now includes sixteen States, with a 
population of 305,000,000 inhabitants. There is no 
need to describe its operation at length. Their nature 
can best be understood by the following statement of 
the services which the bureau is prepared to render : — 

If, therefore, you have ever any need of precise informa- 
tion concerning industrial property which you cannot obtain 
elsewhere, here you have an almost gratuitous source — the 
cost is one franc per consultation — a source at once im- 
partial and exact. In 1896, this bureau received or sent out 
1,554 communications in connection with its inquiry de- 
partment. 

Another institution which places this bureau in direct 
contact with the public is that dealing with the international 
registration of trade-marks. The special arrangement 
relative to this is at the present time binding on nine States: 
Belgium, Brazil, Spain, France, Italy, Holland, Portugal, 



34 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

Switzerland, and Tunis. If you wish to protect a trade- 
mark in these countries, you may, after having registered 
it in the federal Bureau, send it t othe international Bureau, 
together with a sum of 100 francs. This means a saving of 
time as well as of money, obviating, as it does, the necessity 
of registering in each separate country. 

The Union for the Protection of the Eights of 
Authors includes thirteen countries with 534,000,000 
inhabitants. 

In the fourth great organization, which deals with 
International Railways, England has no part. There 
are only ten States represented on this International 
Institution, viz: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Den- 
mark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Holland and Swit- 
zerland. The network of railway thus submitted to 
the jurisdiction of the bureau is 173,000 kilometres. 
It deals at present only with the goods traffic; but al- 
ready the Russians, who somewhat oddly (according 
to English ideas) seem much more frequently to take 
the initiative in progressive internationalism than 
England, suggest that passenger traffic should also be 
placed under the control of the bureau: — 

The Convention is remarkable in this, that it unites all 
the European railroads belonging to it in one network of 
rails, worked under a common tariff as regards international 
transport, and in such a manner that all the managing de- 
partments are conjointly answerable, the one with the other, 
as regards any goods they have undertaken to carry, so that 
any one can sue either the sending or receiving agents with- 
out taking into consideration on what part of the system the 
damage or delay arose. Definite sums have been fixed in 
case of loss or damage, or if there is delay in delivering 
goods, for the mutual claims of sender and receiver, for the 



THE CAPITAL OF THE CONTINENT 35 

demands of the custom®, etc. All that concerns the trans- 
port of merchandise is arranged in so complete a manner 
that Swiss federal law has been copied word for word from 
the Convention. 

The bureau has a list of 2,000 international tariffs 
to publish and a catalogue of all the railway stations 
open to international traffic, of which there are about 
45,000. The International Railway Bureau is prac- 
tically an international arbitration court dealing with 
great institutions, whose revenue is considerably 
greater than that of many States : — 

It acts as an umpire to shorten litigation between different 
administrations when the different parties desire it. Here 
we have an institution which is of quite a novel character, 
and which is of great interest — a permanent tribunal in- 
stituted to regulate international differences. 

Generally speaking, railway bureaux arrange their dis- 
putes by special arbitration for each department of traffic. 
But for all that, interesting cases are brought before the 
permanent tribunal. 

These judicial functions, and those by which the Central 
Office has the right of intervention, at the request of one 
of the parties concerned, to arrange matters which have 
been left in abeyance, are destined in time to become more 
important still. It is impossible to forsee the establish- 
ment of a Court to facilitate monetary arrangements be- 
tween different administrations. When the institution, 
which is still in its infancy, has developed, there is no doubt 
that new departments will come into existence, and that 
those which already exist will develop still further. For 
instance, Russia has proposed to regulate the transport of 
travellers and of merchandise, and this proposal has been 
already taken into consideration by the administration. 

M. Droz dwells with natural and patriotic pride on 
the fact that these bureaus, domiciled in Switzerland 



36 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

and officered almost entirely by Swiss, have neverthe- 
less succeeded in functioning to the satisfaction of all 
the States whose interests they represent. It is a fact 
of good augury for the future pacific evolution of the 
Continental organism. To have assisted in the devel- 
opment of these centres for international organization 
is one of the services which Switzerland has rendered 
to mankind. Is it, then, too much to describe Berne, 
capital of Switzerland and headquarters of so many 
international administrations, as the incipient Capital 
of the United States of Europe? 

Another potent factor in human progress is the in- 
ternational wagon-lit which has hitherto attracted 
little attention from the statesman or the philosopher. 
It is a dumb thing, the wagon-lit, a dull, mechanic 
thing, inanimate, with neither heart, soul, conscience, 
nor reason, but nevertheless it has achieved results 
which prophets and apostles and poets and seers have 
despaired of. Its fatherland is co-extensive with the 
metal track of the Continent, and every time it passes 
it erases, although with imperceptible touch, the fron- 
tiers which divide the nations. It is, indeed, the high- 
est example of human ingenuity in the matter of a 
locomotive dwelling-place. What the Atlantic steamer 
is to the ocean, the wagon-lit is to the solid land. Its 
passengers no sooner cross its threshold than they be- 
come citizens of the world in a very real sense. Not 
even the humble snail of the hedgerow is more com- 
pletely self-contained than your traveller in a wagon- 
lit. He has his own apartment, his bed-chamber, his 



THE CAPITAL OF THE CONTINENT 37 

dining-room, his lavatory; the whole country is spread 
out before him on either side, in one endless gallery 
and panorama of living pictures. He can be alone or 
in society as he pleases. He can take his constitu- 
tional by walking down the long corridors while the 
train is speeding along at the rate of forty or fifty miles 
an hour. The conductor waits upon him as a valet, 
the chef cooks for him, all manner of wine is provided 
for his delectation, he lives in a peripatetic palace as 
comfortably and as luxuriously as he could do in any 
hotel on the Continent. For him even the barrier of 
the donane is, if not abolished, at least minimized, and 
in many cases the examination of luggage is made on 
the car without any necessity for carrying of packages 
across the barrier to the place of revision. 

Compare for one moment the ease with which I 
travelled around Europe, using the international 
2i' agon-lit wherever it was accessible, and the difficul- 
ties with which any monarch or prince of the blood 
would have had to deal only one hundred years ago in 
making the same tour. Neither in speed, in comfort, 
nor economy could the greatest monarch in the world 
have traversed the same distance which a plain plebe- 
ian now covers without the slightest sense of strain or 
of physical exertion. Locomotion has really become 
not so much an exercise as a luxury, and instead of 
regarding a journey of a thousand miles as an enter- 
prise entailing exertion and exposure, we have come 
to regard it as more or less a mode of recuperative 
recreation. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE EUROPEAN CONCERT. 



No more signal instance of the possibility of mo- 
mentary aberration on the part of statesmen and peo- 
ples can be imagined than the extraordinary way in 
which Mr. Gladstone and many of his followers took 
to blaspheming the European Concert in the last years 
of his life. All the cheap wit of the newspaper men 
of the world was launched upon the European Con- 
cert: it was slow; it was unwieldy; it might be a steam- 
roller, but a steam-roller which was stuck in the mud. 
A perfect hailstorm of criticisms and witticisms held 
up to ridicule and contempt what was, after all, the 
only principle which the European nations have yet 
discovered for the regulation of their joint affairs with- 
out bloodshed. Apart from its humanitarian aspect, 
the great political merit of Mr. Gladstone's Eastern 
agitation of 1876 to 1878 was due to his advocacy of 
the principle of the European Concert, and the grava- 
men of his impeachment of Lord Beaconsfield's harum- 
scarum Jingo policy was that he had wantonly de- 
stroyed the great instrument by which any improve- 
ments could be effected in the East. Lord Salisbury, 
fortunately, learned his lesson well, and through good 
38 



THE EUROPEAN CONCERT 39 

report and through ill he has cleaved to the principle 
of concerted action in dealing with the Eastern Ques- 
tion. In that Concert we have not only the germ of 
the United States of Europe, but an actual evolution 
and realization, although still very imperfect, of the 
conception of a federal centre of the Continent, which 
can not only deliberate, but on occasion can act. The 
New Year has opened auspiciously with the triumph 
— tardy but nevertheless genuine — of the principle 
of concerted action in Crete. The four Powers, 
acting in concert, have at last succeeded in expelling 
the Turkish troops from Crete without the exertion 
of any more than police force. There have been no 
pitched battles, and the Crescent has given place to 
the Cross without any of the desperate trials of 
strength between the Turk and the Greek which have 
marked the concession of autonomy to every other 
Turkish province. There were massacres, no doubt, 
which might have been avoided; but there was no war: 
there was only an operation of police. There is in the 
settlement of Cretan affairs a welcome precedent, in- 
dicating the road along which humanity has to travel. 
When the United States of Europe come into or- 
ganic being as complete as that already enjoyed by the 
United States of America, they will still need armed 
forces to execute the decisions of the Federal Govern- 
ment. It will be an international police rather than an 
international soldiery. Mankind passes through regu- 
lar stages in its progress towards peace. First, there is 
the primitive state of universal war, in which every man 



40 TEE EXITED STATES OF EUROPE 

is free to slay his fellow-man, if he can and if he will. 
From that stage it is by a natural process of easy grada- 
tion that we arrive at a period when the right of levy- 
ing war is practically confined to powerful individuals, 
feudal chieftains and the like. They exercised the 
right of private war, which degenerated in many cases 
into brigandage, out of which Europe emerged, thanks 
to the evolution of the soldier. The trained fighting 
man of the central power, whatever his faults may be, 
nevertheless represents an immense stride in progress 
from the armed bands of the soldiers of fortune and 
feudal chiefs who filled Europe with bloodshed in the 
later Middle Ages. We are now on the verge of the 
next step of evolution — the conversion of the soldier 
into the policeman. The final stage, of course, will 
come when humanity has attained such measure of 
moral development as to stand in no need of coercive 
authority at all, when every one, as the American 
humorist puts it, " can do as he darned well pleases," 
but when every one will only please to do what is right 
and just to his fellow-men. That ultimate ideal of 
the Christian and of the Anarchist lies far ahead, but 
on the road thither stands the evolution of the soldier 
into the policeman. But this will not be attained 
until the United States of Europe have come into for- 
mal and juridical existence. In Crete we can see it on 
the way. Crete also has established the great prin- 
ciple that the unity of the European Concert is not 
destroyed when a couple of its members refuse to take 
any active part in giving effect to its decisions. We 



TEE EUROPEAN CONCERT 41 

are therefore within measurable range of seeing the 
establishment of a real federated Europe which will 
not be crippled by the principle of the liberum veto. 

At one time there seemed a great danger that this 
mistake would be committed. By the liberum veto, 
in the old Polish kingdom any one member of the 
Assembly could defeat any proposition by simply ut- 
tering his protest. In like manner it has been held 
that the six Powers must all keep step or they can do 
nothing at all. The necessary consequence was that 
the Powers were often reduced to impotence. But 
this is a passing phase. Sooner or later — probably 
sooner than later — it will be discovered that the libe- 
rum veto will be as fatal to Europe as it proved to 
Poland. In the European Areopagus decisions will 
have to be taken without absolute unanimity, and in 
this, as in other things, the minority will have to yield 
to the majority. Of course, each of the great Powers 
will always have a sovereign right to go to war to en- 
force its protest, if it should feel so disposed ; but there 
is a very great difference between going to war to en- 
force your veto and securing the rejection of any pro- 
posal by simply recording your dissent. 

In this respect, Mr. Gladstone took a very significant 
initiative in the year 1880. No one had insisted more 
strongly upon the maintenance of the European Con- 
cert as the one weapon with which it was possible to 
extort anything from the Sultan. But when Mr. 
Gladstone took in hand the task of enforcing the pro- 
visions of the Berlin Treaty, he found that one or more 



42 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

of the Powers were disposed to hang back. He suc- 
ceeded with great difficulty in mustering an inter- 
national fleet in the Adriatic for the purpose of induc- 
ing the Turk to make the necessary cession of territory 
to Montenegro, but when the question arose as to what 
further measures should be adopted to enforce submis- 
sion to the demands which Europe had formulated, 
France and Germany drew back. Russia and Italy 
supported Mr. Gladstone's generous initiative. Mr. 
Gladstone had then to decide what should be done. 
If he had adopted the Jiberum veto theory of the Con- 
cert, and had meekly acquiesced in the doctrine that 
nothing should be done unless all the Powers were 
agreed as to what that something should be, the Turk 
would have snapped his fingers at the Powers, and 
vital clauses of the Berlin Treaty would never have 
been executed. But Mr. Gladstone fortunately was 
made of different material. All the Powers had 
agreed as to what should be done. The Turk himself 
has signed the treaty which ceded territory to Mon- 
tenegro and Greece. There was, therefore, unanimity 
of opinion as to what should be done; there was only 
difference of opinion as to how to carry it into effect. 
France, Germany, and Austria hung back, but Mr. 
Gladstone, with Kussia and Italy at his back, decided 
to seize the Turkish custom-house at Smyrna, in order 
to enforce the Sultan's submission to the mandate of 
Europe. The three Powers which abstained did not, 
although they murmured and held aloof, absolutely 
veto any such action on the part of their allies. Had 



THE EUROPEAN CONCERT 43 

they done so, it would have been difficult for Mr. 
Gladstone to proceed, for Europe would then have 
been equally divided, three against three. As the 
matter stood, the three who were bent on action did 
not allow the refusal of the support of the others to 
paralyze their action. If in 1S9G Lord Salisbury 
could have secured the support of two other Powers, 
it is possible that he would have dealt as drastically 
with the Turk as Mr. Gladstone. Unfortunately, in 
the recent crisis we had not even a single Power at 
our back, and some of the Powers were believed to be 
ready to oppose our isolated action even by force of 
arms. 

Under these circumstances, with a strong majority 
in the European Council Chamber against action, the 
minority can only submit until such time as it has 
converted itself into a majority. It is probable that 
for some time to come the European Concert will con- 
tinue to insist upon unanimity in defining the pro- 
posals which are to be made to the Turk, but the 
method of securing compliance therewith will be de- 
cided by a majority vote. 

We have come very near adopting this principle in 
the case of Crete. When it became evident that sub- 
mission to the will of Europe in Crete would entail 
expense and would mortally offend the Turk, Ger- 
many withdrew and was followed by Austria. They 
did not actually protest against the enforcement of the 
decree of Europe, but they repudiated any responsi- 
bilitv, and declined to take anv share in the active 



44 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

operations. Undeterred by this shrinking from the 
logical consequences of their acts, the four Powers 
went on, and succeeded in putting the matter through, 
although not, unfortunately, until the conscience of 
England had been stirred up by the slaying of several 
of our own soldiers. These details, however, will 
shrink out of sight when the historian of the future 
comes to describe the evolution of the United States 
of the Old World. The broad fact is that the six 
Powers having decreed, the four Powers carried out 
the decree. When success was achieved, the spokes- 
man of the abstaining Powers publicly approved of 
what was done, and remarked that four Powers were 
probably a more effective instrument than six in en- 
forcing a policy agreed upon by all. It is an awkward 
question whether the four Powers would have ven- 
tured to put the thing through, if the two, instead of 
merely deserting, had taken up an active policy of 
protest against any further military or naval action in 
Crete. Such an attitude at some future crisis will 
probably test the cohesion and the determination of 
the majority of the European Powers. 

Everything points in the direction of Europe having 
so much to do in providing for the liquidation of the 
Ottoman Empire that the six foreign ministers of the 
great Powers will become more and more a European 
Cabinet, who will learn the habit of working together 
under the daily pressure of events. If so, it would 
seem as if the Turk were going to make amends in the 
final years of his reign for the innumerable atrocities 



THE EUROPEAN CONCERT 45 

which have been his chief resource in government 
since the time he entered Europe. For if Europe can 
he accustomed to act practically as a unity, it will in 
time bring about the United States of Europe, which 
will be none the less welcome because it will be born 
of mutual fear and distrust rather than of brotherly 
love and neighborly confidence. 

In the old myth, when Jupiter bore Europa across 
the sea, he landed her in the Island of Crete, where 
she bore three sons — Minos, Sarpedon, and Rhada- 
manthus. It was a curious coincidence that a Euro- 
pean army commissioned by the six great Powers, and 
acting under the collective orders of Europe, should 
for the first time have made its appearance on the 
Island of Crete. But the coincidence was of happy 
omen, that the new Europa may bring forth, if not 
Minos the lawgiver, and Rhadamanthus the inexorable 
judge, at least a system of international law which will 
be interpreted by an international tribunal. 

In discussing elsewhere the question as to the forces 

which would tend to bring the United States of Europe 

into the most visible and tangible existence, I pointed 

out that there were two elements that were needed if 

the Federation of Europe was to be attained by the 

same road as that by which other federations had been 

brought about on a similar scale: — 

The first and the most necessary is the existence of some 
extraordinary force sufficiently powerful to necessitate the 
union of those whose existence it threatens. In other 
words, in order to found a Kingdom of Heaven it is neces- 
sary that you must have an effective working Devil. John 



40 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

Bull in the eighteenth century with the incarnation of evil, 
in protest against which the American Union came into 
existence. 

In our own century it was the menace of French aggres- 
sion which alone possessed sufficient force to overcome the 
centripetal tendencies of the German peoples. Where are 
we to find an adequate Devil to overcome the force of inertia 
as well as the more active elements of national rivalry and 
race antipathies, so as to bring about the federation of 
Europe? The other element which is lacking is a central 
power sufficiently strong to compel the recalcitrant States 
to come into the alliance. Of course it is a nobler ideal that 
free and equal States should voluntarily, of their own good- 
will, unite on a basis of absolute independence. But human 
nature is not made that way. There is usually a recalcitrant 
minority which needs to be compelled to volunteer. Nearly 
every European State, England not excepted, represents the 
result of a process in which a strong central power had 
gradually crushed all rivals and established authority which 
is now recognized by consent, by the summary process of 
beheading or slaughtering those whose devotion to their 
private and local interests led them to refuse to co-operate 
in the larger unity. The most helpful analogies are to be 
found in the United States of America and the Republic of 
Switzerland. There the federation was established by the 
co-operation of the sovereign States without the need for 
the intervention of any predominant central power; but 
alike in Switzerland and the United States, the federation 
which began in goodwill had to be enforced by the armed 
hand, and we need not be surprised if the United States of 
Europe only gets itself into material existence after con- 
siderable bloodshed. That, however, is a detail, and it is 
a thousand times better that men should be killed in order 
that their corpses should pave the way to the reign of law, 
than that they should be slaughtered merely to perpetuate 
the existing anarchy. In looking round for the necessary 
devil whose evil influence is strong enough to compel the 
European States to federate, we fail to find any excepting 
our old friend the Assassin at Constantinople. 



TEE EUROPEAN CONCERT 4? 

The Turk, I admitted, although evil, was hardly 
important enough to play the great role; and yet, fail- 
ing him, I did at that time not see where to find any 
other. The second indispensable condition was to 
find a leader who would marshal the forces making 
for union and lead them to victory. Two years ago 
it seemed doubtful whether such a leader could be 
found. Last year brought us light on both subjects, 
for it brought us a leader in the person of the Tsar, 
and in his Rescript he indicated a danger quite suffi- 
ciently grave to overcome the force of inertia, as well 
as the more active elements of national rivalry and 
race antipathies. In the year 1S97 Lord Salisbury 
himself — a man not given to indulge in day-dreams — 
put an unerring finger upon this sore point. Speaking 
at the Mansion House on November 9th, 1897, after 
dwelling upon the ever-increasing competition in 
armaments among the nations, Lord Salisbury said: — 

The one hope that we haves to prevent this competition 
(in armaments) from ending in a terrible effort of mutual 
destruction, which will be fatal to Christian civilization — 
the one hope that we have is that the Powers may gradually 
be brought together to act together in a friendly spirit on all 
subjects of difference that may arise, until at last they shall 
be welded together in some international constitution which 
shall give to the world, as the result of their great strength, 
a long spell of unfettered commerce, prosperous trade and 
continued peace. 

That was Lord Salisbury's one hope. When a year 
later the Peace Rescript of the Tsar appeared, it was 
evident that it was a hope equally entertained at St. 



48 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

Petersburg. Except in international action, there 
was no hope of escaping from a peril which, un- 
checked, would overwhelm civilization in ruin. I 
marvel at my own blindness when, writing in 1897, I 
failed to perceive what was plainly manifest under our 
very eyes. Compared with the catastrophe so clearly 
foreseen and described by the Tsar, the dangers 
involved in the partition of the Ottoman Empire fade 
into utter insignificance. My only excuse is that I 
was no blinder than the majority of mankind appear 
to be even to-day when the clarion call from St. Peters- 
burg is echoing through the world. So now we have 
the necessary stimulus in the revelation of a visible 
danger, and at the same time we have at the head of 
the family of nations a ruler young enough, brave 
enough, and enthusiastic enough to undertake a task 
from which the rest of his contemporaries have shrunk 
in despair. 

I do not claim for Nicholas II. of Russia that he 
towers aloft above his contemporaries, or that he, who 
is the most modest of men, has any aspirations to play 
the role of the founder of the European Common- 
wealth. I only say that he, more than any sovereign 
in Europe, has the eye to see and the courage to say the 
essential truth of the situation. It is probable that 
he himself but dimly realizes whither his initiative 
will lead him. The British people who, in Seeley's 
famous phrase, " founded an empire in sheer absence 
of mind," are the last people in the world to demand 
that those who do great things should know before- 



THE EUROPEAN CONCERT 49 

hand what they are about. But if the Emperor does 
not see it himself, it is plain enough to all the rest of 
the world, and will, in due season, make itself manifest 
to him also, that if the ideals set before the world in 
his Rescript are to be achieved, it will be done by fol- 
lowing the well-worn path which leads to the federa- 
tion of the Continent. 

This is not the only century in which the idealist 
has dreamed of a Continental State and sovereigns 
have labored for the realization of the sublime con- 
ception of a federated Europe. The ideas associated 
with the Amphictyonic Council have haunted as will- 
o'-the-wisps the imagination of successive generations 
of mankind. Under the Caesars, western, southern 
and central Europe was rough-hewn into an effective 
imperial unity. All the greater Popes had the vision 
of united Europe, and most of them, seeing that no 
one else grasped the great conception, sought sedu- 
lously to confer upon the chair of St. Peter the he- 
gemony of the Continent. 

Mr. Edwin K. Mears in the New England Magazine 
recently summarized in a series of articles the sugges- 
tions made by eminent thinkers for securing the peace 
of the world. Here, for instance, is his account of 
the great design of Henri IV. in the very last years 
of the sixteenth century: — 

Henri IV., acting in concert with Queen Elizabeth, in her 
old! age, conceived the plan of what he called the Christian 
Commonwealth, to be formed among the Powers of Europe. 
His plan in brief was this, to reduce the number of European 
states, much as the Congress of Vienna eventually did two 



50 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

hundred years afterwards, or so that all Europe should be 
divided among fifteen powers. Russia did not then count 
as part of Europe; and Prussia was not then born. Of these 
Powers, six were the kingdoms of England, France, Spain, 
Denmark, Sweden and Lombardy. Five were to be elective 
monarchies, viz.: The German Empire, the Papacy, Poland, 
Hungary, and Bohemia; and there were to be four repub- 
lics — Switzerland, Venice, the States of Holland and Bel- 
gium, and the Republic of Italy, made up somewhat as the 
kingdom of Italy is now. These fifteen Powers were to 
maintain but one standing army. The chief business of this 
army was to keep the peace among the States, and to pre- 
vent any sovereign from interfering with any other, from 
enlarging his borders, or other usurpations. This army and 
the navy were also to be ready to repel invasions of Mussul- 
mans and other barbarians. For the arrangement of com- 
merce, and other mutual interests, a Senate was to be ap- 
pointed of four members from each of the larger, and two 
from each of the smaller States, who should serve three 
years, and be in constant session. It was supposed that, for 
affairs local in their character, a part of these Senators 
might meet separately from the others, ^u occasions of 
universal importance, they would meet together. Smaller 
congresses, for more trivial circumstances, were also pro- 
vided for. . . . According to Sully, at the moment of 
Henri's murder, he had secured the practical active co- 
operation of twelve of the fifteen Powers, who were to unite 
in this confederation. 

The immediate aim of this arrangement was to 
humble the overweening power of Austria, but the 
further purpose was to secure permanent peace. One 
hundred years later, in 1693, Wm. Penn brought out 
his " Essay Towards the Present and Future Peace of 
Europe, by the Establishment of an European Diet, 
Parliament or Estates." Penn's fundamental propo- 
sition was, in his own words: — 



TIJE EUROPEAN CONCERT 51 

The sovereign princes of Europe, who represent that 
society or independent state of men that was previous to the 
obligations of society, should, for the same reason that 
engaged men first in society, viz., love of peace and order, 
agree to meet by their stated deputies in a, general diet, estates 
or parliament, and there establish rules of justice for sov- 
ereign princes to observe one another; anu thus to meet 
yearly, or once in two or three years at farthest, or as they 
shall see cause, and to be styled the Sovereign or Imperial Diet, 
Parliament, or State of Europe, before which sovereign assem- 
bly should be brought all differences depending between 
one sovereign and another that cannot be made up by 
private embassies before the session begins; and that if any 
of the sovereignties that constitute these Imperial States 
shall refuse to submit their claims or pretensions to them, 
or to abide or perform the judgment thereof, and seek their 
remedy by arms or delay their compliance beyond the time 
prefixed in their resolutions, all the other sovereignties, 
united as one strength, shall compel the submission and 
performance of the sentence, with damages to the suffering 
that obliged their party and charges to the sovereignties' 
submission. 



It will be observed that Penn was not afraid of that 
" blessed word compulsion." In this respect he dis- 
tinguishes himself from most of the " peace at any 
price " people who are generally eager to consider 
themselves his followers. But Penn was a statesman 
with actual and intimate knowledge of affairs. Just 
as many nowadays quote the precedents of the United 
States, so Penn referred to Sir William Temple's 
account of the United Provinces of Holland " as fur- 
nishing a practical illustration in narrow limits of that 
constitution which he would have extended to cover 
all Europe." 



52 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

Yet another hundred years and Immanuel Kant 
published in 1795 his " Towards Eternal Peace," of 
which the leading ideas were local autonomy and 
world-wide federalism, or the federation of self -gov- 
erned States. There is a strange periodicity about 
these great dreams of universal peace. At the end 
of the sixteenth century, Henri IV.'s "Great Design"; 
at the end of the seventeenth, Penn's " Essay " ; at the 
end of the eighteenth, Kant's " Zum ewigen Frieden," 
to be followed at the end of the nineteenth century 
by the Imperial Rescript of the Emperor of Russia. 

Even the Napoleons, the first as well as the third, 
saw the coming of Europe afar off, and each in his own 
way labored to bring it to birth. The first, a Mars 
who had clutched the thunderbolt of Jove, stormed 
across the Continent, crumbling beneath his mail-clad 
feet whole acres of feudal masonry which cumbered 
the ground. The offspring and the Nemesis of the 
Revolution, he was the greatest leveller the Continent 
had ever seen. The third Napoleon, whose favorite 
occupation he himself defined as devising solutions for 
insoluble problems, dreamed much of the possibility 
of reconstituting some kind of federation of Europe. 
It was this cloudy notion that prompted those con- 
tinual proposings of conferences with which he used 
to trouble his hand-to-mouth contemporaries. Nor 
was it only in kings'courts or in Imperial or Papal 
Councils that the great idea brooded over the minds 
of men. It was the theme of the poet's song, of the 
saint's devotions. It inspired much of the swelling 



THE EUROPEAN CONCERT 53 

rhetoric of Victor Hugo. It was the burden of the 
prophetic vision of Mazzini. 

And now this far-off, unseen event, toward which 
the whole Continent has been moving with slow but 
resistless march, has come within the pale of practical 
politics, and on the threshold of the twentieth century 
we await this latest and greatest new birth of Time. 



CHAPTER V 



EUROPA 



1 had the good fortune to be in Berlin two years 
ago. A great capital is always a great inspiration. 
And Berlin, with its heroic associations of past wars, 
is more inspiring than most of the younger cities of 
the world. But that which impressed me most on 
this visit was the new building of the Reichstag, which 
had not been completed the last time I was in Ger- 
many. It was not the building itself — although that 
is imposing, if rather squat, with noble equestrian 
statues standing boldly against the sky — but the polit- 
ical fact which it represented. Here under one roof, 
around the same tribune, gather in peaceful debate 
the representatives of as many States as those which 
now make up the anarchy of Europe. It is the fashion 
nowadays to speak of language as if it were a tie closer 
than all others. But the belief in the unity of the 
Fatherland because of its common speech is hardly a 
century old, and long after Arndt had embodied the 
idea in verse, German fought German with the utmost 
indifference to the German tongue. The intense in- 
dividuality of the German, his tendency to construct 
a special theory of the universe entirely for his own 

54 



EUROPA 55 

use out of his own consciousness, made the German 
races the most intractable material for empire-building 
on the Continent. They fought each other for the 
love of God; they fought for the pride of place; they 
were capable of fighting for a theory of irregular 
verbs. They were divided, and sub-divided, and re- 
divided again into kingdoms, principalities, duchies, 
and all manner of smaller States. Every ruler was 
as touchy as a Spanish hidalgo about his precedence, 
and no miser ever clutched his gold with more savage 
determination to keep and to hold than every German 
princelet maintained to the uttermost the princely pre- 
rogative of making war and peace. Not even the con- 
stant pressure of foreign peril sufficed to overcome the 
centrifugal tendency of the German genius. Again 
and again the wiser heads amongst them had devised 
more or less elaborate plans for securing German 
unity. After the fall of Napoleon, the best that could 
be done was the Bund, which was almost as provoking 
in its deliberative inaction as the European Concert 
is to-day. But the Bund perished at the sword's point, 
to be succeeded by the North and South German Con- 
federations, which in turn disappeared when the vic- 
tories over France rendered it possible for the Prus- 
sian King to be proclaimed German Emperor in the 
Palace at Versailles. Since then unified Germany 
has been at peace. Germany has become a unit, and 
the Reichstag, although sorely distracted by the fis- 
siparous tendency of the German parliamentary man, 
has been the parliament of the United Empire. 



56 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

How long will it be, I wondered, as I wandered 
through the building of the Reichstag, before unified 
Europe has its Parliament House, and the Federation 
of Europe finds for itself a headquarters and a local 
habitation for a permanent representative assembly? 
What Germany has done, Europe may do. 

The union of Germany has not resulted in the dis- 
armament of Germans, neither would the Constitution 
of the United States of Europe lead to the disarma- 
ment of the Continent. But no German now buckles 
on the sword with any dread lest he may have to un- 
sheathe it against a brother German. The area within 
which peace reigns and the law court is supreme is now 
widened so as to include all German lands between 
Russia and France. That is an enormous gain. If 
we could achieve anything like it for Europe we might 
be well content. 

The progress of mankind to a higher civilization 
has been marked at every stage by the continuous 
widening of the area within which no sword shall be 
drawn and no shot fired save by command of the cen- 
tral authority. In pure savagery every individual is 
a sovereign unit. The mateless tiger in the jungle 
is the most perfect type of the first stage of human 
individualism. Whom he will or can he slays, and 
whom he will or must he spares alive. His appetite 
or his caprice is his only law. He has power of life 
and death, and the sole right of levying war or making 
peaice without reference to any other sovereignty than 
his own. From that starting-point man has gradually 



EUROPA 57 

progressed by irregular stages across the centuries, 
until the right to kill, instead of being the universal 
prerogative of every man, is practically vested in about 
twenty hands — so far as white-skinned races are con- 
cerned. The first step was the substitution of the 
family for the individual as the unit of sovereignty. 
War might prevail ad libitum outside, but there must 
be peace at home. After the family came the tribe. 
After the tribe, the federation of tribes for purposes 
of self-defence or of effective aggression. Then came 
the cities, with the civic unit. From time to time a 
despot or conqueror, driven by sheer ambition, estab- 
lished an empire, which, however imperfect it might 
be, maintained peace within its boundaries. Then 
nations were formed, each with their own organism 
and each allowing at first a very wide latitude for pri- 
vate and local war to their component parts. In our 
own history, not even our insular position prevented 
our forefathers, long after they had achieved some 
kind of nominal unity, preserving with jealous eye 
the right of private and provincial war. By slow de- 
grees, however, the right to kill has been confined to 
even fewer and fewer hands. The mills of God have 
ground as usual very slowly, but those who took the 
sword perished by the sword, and the pertinacious as- 
serters of the ancient inalienable right of private war 
were converted from the error of their ways by the 
effective process of extermination at the hands of a 
stronger power, determined that no one should wield 
the power of the sword but itself. In Germany to- 



58 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

day in place of a hundred potentates, each enjoying 
the right to kill, William II. is the sole War Lord. 

And as it is in Germany so it is elsewhere. The 
right to kill in Europe are even fewer than the six 
" Thou shalt not kill " is concerned is now confined in 
Europe to William II., Nicholas II., Francis Joseph, 
Humbert, Victoria, and President Faure. These 
are the lords of the first degree, whose right to kill 
is practically absolute. After them come the lords 
of the second degree, who are allowed a certain lati- 
tude of killing provided they can secure the neutrality 
of one or more of the War Lords of the first degree. 
There is a nominal right to kill enjoyed by all the 
kings of all the States. But as a matter of fact it 
cannot be exercised except in alliance with one or 
other of the greater Powers. Greece thought that it 
was possible to exercise this nominal prerogative of 
independent sovereignty. Her experience is not such 
as to encourage other small States to follow her 
example. 

But in reality the persons who have the unrestricted 
right to suspend the Decalogue so far as the command 
absolute war lords. Europe is now practically divided 
into two camps. There is the Russo-French Alliance, 
entered into for the purpose of restraining France 
from precipitating war, which practically gives Nich- 
olas II. a veto upon the right of levying war enjoyed 
by the French Republic. On the other hand, there 
is the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy, 
which practically renders it impossible for Austria or 



EUROPA ' 59 

Italy to go to war without the permission of "William 
II. Between these two Alliances there is the British 
Empire. In Europe, therefore, the right of levying 
war is vested almost solely in the Queen, her grandson, 
and her granddaughter's husband. Nicholas II., Wil- 
liam II., and Victoria — these three are the Trium- 
virate of Europe. And as the late Tsar said to me at 
Gratschina, " If these three — Russia, Germany, and 
England — hold together, there will be no war." So 
far, therefore, we have come in our pilgrimage to the 
United States of Europe, that the power of the sword, 
which last century was a practical reality in the hands 
of a hundred potentates, is now practically limited to 
three persons, without whose permission no gun may 
be fired in wrath in the whole Continent. 

No reproach is more frequently brought against me 
than that of inconsistency. It is the most familiar 
of the jibes which are flung at me by both friends and 
foes alike when they differ from me, that they never 
know what I am going to be at next, and that I am 
everything by turns and nothing long. These re- 
proaches and sarcasms I have borne with the equanim- 
ity of one whose withers are unwrung, for I happen to 
be in the fortunate position of a man whose opinions 
have been on record from day to day and from month 
to month for the last twenty-five years. To all such 
accusations there is only one answer: Litera sci'ipta 
manet. It is quite true that I have infinitely varied 
the method by which I have sought to attain the ulti- 
mate ideal that at the very beginning of my journal- 



60 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

istic career I set myself to realize. I have supported 
and opposed in turn almost every leading statesman, 
and I have from time to time thrown whatever influ- 
ence I had, now on the side of Imperialism, and then 
on the side of peace, and I have done all this, and 
hope to go on doing it till the end of my time. But 
to base the charge of inconsistency on this continual 
change of tactics is as absurd as it would be to accuse 
a mariner of not steering for his port because from 
day to day and from hour to hour he tacks from side 
to side in order the more expeditiously to reach his 
distant port. 

This question of the United States of Europe has 
been one of the ideals towards which I have constantly, 
in fair weather and in foul, directed my course. 
Nineteen years ago, in the critical election of 1880, 
it was my lot to draw up an electoral catechism which 
was more widely used as an electoral weapon by the 
party which issued triumphant from the polls than 
any other broadsheet in the campaign. In this cate- 
chism I formulated my conception of the English for- 
eign policy in terms which, after the lapse of nineteen 
years, I do not find necessary to vary by a single 
syllable : — 

Question: " What is England's mission abroad? " 
Answer: " To maintain the European Concert — that 
germ of the United States of Europe — against isolated ac- 
tion; to establish a Roman peace among the dark-skinned 
races of Asia, Polynesia, and Africa; to unite all branches 
of the English-speaking race in an Anglo-Saxon Bund, and 
to spread Liberty, Civilization and Christianity throughout 



EDROPA 01 

the world."—" The Elector's Catechism." General Election 
of 1880. 

My last visit to Russia and the publication of this 
book are the latest efforts that I have made to realize 
the ideal which was clearly set out in the above sen- 
tence written in 1880. The conception in those days 
was confined to few, but nowadays the parties led by 
Lord Eosebery and Lord Salisbury would vie with 
each other in asserting their readiness to recognize the 
European Concert as the germ of the United States 
of Europe, and to develop the concerted action of six 
Powers in relation to the question of the East into a 
Federated Union of all the European States. It may 
perhaps be well worth while to form some idea of this 
new organic entity which it is the first object of our 
foreign policy to create. Are we repeating the crime 
of Frankenstein, or are we fashioning, like Pygmalion, 
a beautiful creature into which at the appointed time 
the gods will breathe the breath of life? In other 
w ords, what is this Europe whose United States we are 
seeking to federate? 

Europe is a continent. It is hardly as yet a realized 
personality. There was a fair Europa in the myth- 
ology of the ancients, whom Jove loved, and whose 
story once suggested to Tenniel the idea that John 
Bull might aspire successfully to play the part of the 
Father of gods and men. But outside mythology 
there is little personification of Europe. The sym- 
bolical group at the base of the Albert Memorial, 
representing Europe as one of the four continents, is 



62 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

almost the only effort with which we are familiar in 
England. 

But such personification of a Federation of States 
is possible enough. The United States of America 
form a federation which has its recognized symbolical 
embodiment in Columbia and its humorous personifi- 
cation in Uncle Sam. The British Empire is a con- 
glomerate far more heterogeneous and wide-scattered 
than the United States of Europe, but we have our 
symbol in the heroic figure of Britannia and our famil- 
iar personification in John Bull. The German Em- 
pire, to take another illustration, is also a conglomerate 
of kingdoms and duchies and cities ; but the first great 
effort of German art to express in permanent form the 
triumph of German arms in the attainment of German 
unity was the erection of the colossal statue of Ger- 
mania upon the wooded heights of the Niederwald, 
where she still keeps watch and ward over the German 
Tthine. But in all these cases it must be admitted 
there is a certain unity of national type which facili- 
tates the task of personifying the federal combination. 

The caricaturist, who often precedes the more seri- 
ous artist in the selection and illustration of themes 
of national and international importance, has not been 
slow to seize the opening offered by the first crude, 
tentative efforts towards international action in Crete 
by portraying the European soldier as a fantastic con- 
glomerate, a thing of shreds and patches, clothed in 
fragments of all uniforms. Not so will the artist pro- 
ceed who endeavors to present before the world the 



EUROPA 63 

heroic proportions of her who, although the least 
among the Continents, is now, as she has been for two 
thousand years, greatest amongst them all. The Star 
of Empire which shone in the remote past oyer the 
valley of the Xile and the plains watered by the 
Euphrates has since the great day of Salamis been 
faithful to Europe. It may be that the new Conti- 
nent of the West may yet challenge successfully the 
primacy of the older world. But except in alliance 
with Britain, no such challenge can be dreamed of for 
a century, and Britain is European as well as Ameri- 
can, Asiatic as well as African. For as the Tsar is 
Emperor of All the Russias, so Her Majesty is Em- 
press on All the Continents and of All the Seas. 

There is a charming little poem by Russell Lowell 
entitled " The Beggar." The poet describes himself 
as a beggar wandering through the world, asking from 
all things that he meets something of their distinguish- 
ing characteristics. From the old oak he craves its 
steadfastness, from the granite gray its stern unyield- 
ing might, from the sweetly mournful pine he asks its 
pensiveness serene, from the violet its modesty, and 
from the cheerful brook its sparkling light content. 

The idea is a pretty conceit, but it may help us to 
consider the distinctive qualities which the world may 
crave not in vain from the various component parts of 
this new composite entity, the United States of 
Europe. 

It is indeed good to regard our sister nations with 
grateful heart, to contemplate the gifts which they 



64 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

bring with them to the fraternal banquet of the peo- 
ples, and to realize, if only in imagination, what we 
should lose if any of the European States were to 
drop out of the world. 

First among the States in area and in power stands 
Russia, the sword of Europe against the Infidel, for 
centuries the only hope and shelter of the Christian 
East. Upon the threshold of the Russian home burst 
the full horrors of Asiatic conquest. Time was when 
every wandering Tartar from the steppes rode as mas- 
ter and owner over prostrate Muscovy. But the storm 
of nomad savagery spent itself upon the Russian land, 
which, though submerged for a time, nevertheless 
saved Europe. 

After a time the Russians threw off the yoke of the 
oppressor and entered upon their secular mission as 
liberators and champions of the Christian East. To 
their self-sacrificing valor the world owes the freedom 
of Roumania, the emancipation of Servia, the inde- 
pendence of Greece, and the liberation of Bulgaria. 
!STot a freeman breathes to-day between the Pruth and 
the Adriatic but owes his liberty to Russia. Liberty 
in these Eastern lands was baptized in Russian blood 
freely spent in the Holy War against the Moslem op- 
pressor. Nor is it only liberty in Eastern lands which 
owes a heavy debt to Russian sacrifices. As Russia in 
the Middle Ages received upon her ample breast the 
shock of the Tartar spears, and made for Europe a 
rampart with her bleeding form against the Asiatic 
horde, so Russia at the dawn of this century arrested 



EVROPA 65 

the devastating wave of Napoleonic conquest- The 
flames of her burning capital were as the star of the 
dawn to the liberties of Europe. Moscow delivered 
the death-blow to which Leipsic and Waterloo were 
but the coup de grace. In later years Russia has done 
yeoman's service to the cause of humanity by bri- 
dling the savages of the Asiatic steppes and destroying 
slavery in the heart of Asia. She is now bridging the 
Continent with a road of steel, and from Archangel 
to Odessa, from Warsaw to Saghalien is maintaining 
with somewhat heavy hand the Roman peace. Russia 
has preserved in the midst of her dense forests and 
illimitable steppes the principle of co-operative hus- 
bandry, of a commune based on brotherly love, and 
has realized the dream of village republics locally 
autonomous under the segis of the Tsar. In the face 
of Asia, fanatically Moslem, and Europe, fanatically 
Papal, Russia has maintained alike against Turkish 
scimitar and Polish lance her steadfast allegiance to 
the Christian Creed. Her travellers penetrate the 
remotest fastnesses of Asia; her men of science are in 
the foremost rank of modern discovery; the stubborn 
valor of her soldiers has taught the world new lessons 
as to the might of self-sacrificing obedience ; her poor- 
est peasant preserves unimpaired the splendid loyalty 
and devotion of the Middle Ages; her writers of 
genius, like Turgenieff, delight the civilized world 
with their romances; her painters, Gay and Verest- 
chagin, display a genius as great on canvas as her 
Rubinstein and Paderewski in music; while in all the 



66 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

world to-day no voice sounds out over sea and land 
with such prophetic note as that of Count Tolstoi. 
There is in Russia, as in every other land, much that 
even the most patriotic Russians would wish absent; 
but who is there who can deny that, take her all in 
all, the disappearance of Russia as she is from the 
European galaxy would leave us poor indeed? 

From the largest to the smallest, from the Empire 
of the plain to the Republic of the Alps, is but a step. 
Both are European. Who is there among free men 
whose pulse does not beat faster at the thought of all 
that Switzers have dared and Switzers have done? 
Here in the heart of surrounding despotism these 
hardy peasants and mountaineers tended the undying 
flame of Liberty, and century after century furnished 
an envious world with the spectacle of a frugal Re- 
public, whose more than Roman virtue remained proof 
against the blandishments of royal ambition or the 
menaces of imperial power. William Tell may be a 
myth, but the legend that is associated with his name 
is more of a living reality than all the deeds of all 
the Hapsburgs duly certified by the official Dry-as- 
dusts. And Arnold von Winkelried, he at least was 
real both in history and in song, and for all time the 
story of his dying cry, " Make way for Liberty! " as 
he gathered the Austrian spears into his breast, will 
lift the soul of man above the level of selfish common- 
place and inspire even the least imaginative of mortals 
with some gleam of the vision — the beatific vision — of 
the heroism of sacrifice. To-day, when the day of 



V"-' EUROPA 67 

storm and stress has given place to more tranquil times, 
Switzerland has become at once the political and social 
laboratory of the world and the play ground and health 
resort of Europe. Here at the base of her snowclad 
hills Europe cherishes as the elite of the Continent 
the intelligent and energetic democracy which defends 
its frontier without the aid of a standing army; and 
while lacking alike rivers, seaport, coal, and iron, has 
nevertheless proved itself able to hold its own in the 
competition of the world. 

" Italia, oh ! Italia, thou who hast the fatal gift of 
beauty," hast the not less priceless gift of associations 
of history and romance, before which those of all other 
nations but Greece simply disappear. The nation 
which boasts as its capital the city of the Caesars can 
never yield to any other the primacy of fame. Europe 
once centred in the Eternal City. The unity of the 
Continent, as far as the Rhine and the Danube, was 
for centuries a realized fact, when the sceptre had not 
departed from Rome nor the lawgiver from the banks 
of the Tiber. Kor is the Italian claim to primacy 
solely traditional. For whatever may be the political 
power of the Quirinal as a world power, Italy makes 
herself felt through the Vatican. At this moment, 
in Chicago, public life is more or less demoralized be- 
cause an Italian old man in Rome made a mistake in 
the selection of the Irishman who rules the great Cath- 
olic city of the West as the Pope's archbishop. And 
as it is in Chicago, so it is to a greater or lesser extent 
in every vast centre of population throughout the 



68 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

world. But the Papacy, although more than Euro- 
pean, is nevertheless a constant factor which must be 
reckoned with in discussing the evolution of Europe. 
The instinct of Leo is entirely in favor of peace and 
unity, but a firebrand in Peter's chair could easily per- 
petuate for another generation the armed anarchy of 
the Continent. Apart alike from politics and religion, 
Italy has always been a potent influence in promoting 
the growth of a wider than national culture, develop- 
ing European rather than provincial interest. For 
centuries before Cook arose and a trip to the Continent 
became a thing of course, Italy alone possessed in her 
treasures of art sufficient attraction to induce men of 
every nation to brave the discomforts and perils of a 
Continental journey. From being the Mistress, Italy 
became the Loadstone of the Continent, and that dis- 
tinction she has still preserved. To those treasure- 
cities of mediaeval art which shine like stars in the 
firmament, reverent pilgrims every year bend their 
way as to most sacred shrines. But in every age, Italy, 
whether poor, distracted, and overrun by barbarian 
conquerors, or queening it as mistress over a Conti- 
nent, has ever possessed a strange and magic charm. 
Dante was hers, and Raphael, Michael Angelo, and 
Savonarola — four names, the power and the glory of 
which are felt even where they are not understood, in 
the remote backwoods of America, or in the depths 
of the Australian bush. In modern times the revolu- 
tionary energy of the mid-century was cradled in Italy. 
Garibaldi restored to politics of the present day some- 



EVROPA 69 

what of the fascination which charms in the pages of 
Ariosto, while Mazzini revived in our latter day the 
primitive type of prophet-seer. 

Nor must we forget, in paying our homage to Italy 
as Queen of the Arts and custodian of the great sites 
from which Pope and Caesar in former times swayed 
the sceptre, spiritual and secular, over mankind, that 
Italy of the present day is peopling the New World 
more rapidly than any of her sister nations. While 
emigration from almost every other country has fallen 
off in the last decade of the century, that from Italy 
has increased until it amounts to well nigh half of the 
European overflow. If this be kept up, we may see 
a new Italy in South America which may be for the 
Italian language and the Italian race what New 
England has been for Britain in the northern hemi- 
sphere. 

From Italy, which on the extreme south approaches 
almost to the torrid heat of Africa, I would turn to 
another land at the opposite extremity of the Conti- 
nent, whose northern frontier lies within the Arctic 
Circle. Sweden and Norway, at present far removed 
from the troubled vortex of European politics, cannot 
vie with Italy in art or with Russia in political power, 
but none the less the sister States represent much 
which Europe could ill spare. We of the north land, 
at least, and all the teeming progeny that have sprung 
from our loins, can never forget the Scandinavian 
home from whence the sea kings came; and although 
our culture is largely Hebraic on one side and Hellenic 



70 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

on the other, the warp and woof upon which the He- 
brew and the Greek have embroidered their ideas is 
essentially Norse. Nor can we of the Reformed faith, 
at least, ever forget the heroic stand made on behalf 
of the Protestant religion by Gustavus Adolphus and 
the brave men whom he led to victory on so many a 
hard-fought field. Charles XII., too., that meteor of 
conquest and of war, supplies one of those heroic and 
chivalrous figures of the European drama whose ro- 
mantic career still inspires those who live under widely 
different circumstances and under remoter skies. 
Norway is the only country in Europe which vies with 
Switzerland in enabling the dwellers in our great 
plains and crowded cities easy access to the sublimest 
mountain scenery. In the social and political realm, 
we owe to Gothenburg, a Swedish town, the most help- 
ful of all the experiments that have been tried for the 
solution of the liquor traffic; while in the world of 
books there are to-day no three names more constantly 
on the lips of the librarians of the world than the three 
great Scandinavians whose fame is the common herit- 
age of our race; Bjornson in fiction, Ibsen in the 
drama, and Nansen in Arctic exploration. 

Again turning southward, we find in Spain another 
of the nations which, in the flush of its Imperial prime, 
endeavored to realize the dream of United Europe. 
Spain at one time seemed destined by Providence to 
the over-lordship of the Old World and the New. 
Between Spain and Portugal the Pope divided the 
whole world which was discovered by the Genoese 



EVROPA 71 

sailor who was financed by Isabella of Spain. It is 
but three hundred years ago since Spain loomed as 
large before the eyes of Europe as Germany plus Eng- 
land would do to-day. Alike on land and sea there was 
none to challenge her supremacy. To-day Spain is 
the mere shadow of her former self, but even if the 
shadow itself vanished from the earth, the memory of 
the great days of Spanish chivalry when, like Russia 
on the east, she stood warden of Europe on the south, 
can never be forgotten. The chivalrous Moors, who 
have left the imperishable monuments of their pres- 
ence in the fairy-like ruins of the Alhambra, were 
very different from the Tartar horde which nearly 
extinguished Russia; but the secular struggle waged 
against them equally called out the heroic qualities of 
the race. As the Moor was the anvil on which the 
Spanish sword was beaten until it became a veritable 
Toledo blade, so in turn Spain became the anvil on 
which our malleable English metal was beaten into 
the broadsword and trident by which we rule the sea 
to-day. Of all her possessions abroad, Spain to-day 
retains but a few straggling islets in the Eastern seas. 
Rut Spanish pride is as great to-day in the hour of 
national decline as when Spain was at the zenith of 
imperial prosperity. To European literature she has 
contributed two great names — Cervantes and Calde- 
ron — one of whom is to-day to the majority of us but 
a name and nothing more; while the other, Cervantes, 
has contributed to the literature of the world one of 
the dozen books which are read everywhere by every- 



72 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

body in every language and in every land. To Europe 
of to-day Spain contributes little but an imposing tra- 
dition and somewhat of the stately dignity of the 
hidalgo, which the modern world, in the rush and 
tumble of these democratic days, is in danger of for- 
getting. Her authors are read but little beyond the 
Pprenees, her statesmen exercise little weight in Euro- 
pean affairs, but in Castelar she contributed to the Par- 
liament of Europe the most eloquent orator of the 
Continent. 

How incredible it would have seemed in the six- 
teenth century had any one predicted that in the cen- 
turies to come Spain would be a Power of the third 
magnitude, while the Austrian Empire, shorn of all 
influence in Germany, would nevertheless rank among 
the half-dozen great Powers of Europe! But the 
incredible thing has come to pass, and Austria-Hun- 
gary, torn by domestic dissensions and threatened by 
powerful foes, continues to exhibit a marvellous vital- 
ity and indestructible youth. The land of the Danube 
with a dual throne, broad based upon a dozen races 
speaking as many languages — the Empire-kingdom is 
the political miracle of the nineteenth century. Mr. 
Gladstone once scornfully asked, " On what spot of 
the map of the world could we place our finger and 
say, here Austria has done good? " But the answer 
is obvious. Outside her frontiers she may have done 
as little good as England has done in eastern Europe, 
but within the limits of the Empire-kingdom Austria 
has rendered invaluable service to the cause of peace 



EURO PA 73 

and civilization of the semi-savage races whom she has 
tamed and kept in line. To act as schoolmaster, not 
on despotic but on constitutional principles, to Ruth- 
enians and Slovaks, Poles and Czechs; to organize a 
State which is indispensable for European stability, 
out of such discordant elements as those which com- 
pose the conglomerate of Austria-Hungary, these are 
achievements indeed for which Europe is not ungrate- 
ful. The dual kingdom not only bears testimony to 
the possibility of creating an organic entity out of the 
most heterogeneous conglomerate of nationalities, it 
further affords the most signal illustration in contem- 
porary history of the fact that States, like individuals, 
can find salvation by conversion when they truly re- 
pent and bring forth fruits meet for repentance. 
Fifty years ago Austria was a byword to every Liberal. 
To-day there is hardly any State in Central Europe 
which has worked out so many problems of decentrali- 
zation on constitutional lines as the Empire of the 
Hapsburgs. 

Turning from the composite dual kingdom, we come 
to a State which in all things is the antithesis of 
Austria-Hungary. Austria-Hungary, although ex- 
tremely diverse in its nationalities, is nevertheless, 
territorially, within a ring fence. The Danish nation, 
on the other hand, compact, homogeneous to an extent 
almost without parallel in Europe, a unity both in race, 
religion, and in language, is nevertheless scattered 
over a peninsula and half-a-dozen islands. In the 
State system of Europe, Denmark, with its handful 



74 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

of population, can throw no sword of Brennus into the 
scale which decides the destinies of nations; but the 
nation marches in the van of European progress. Our 
farmers have learnt by sore experience the energy and 
initiative which have enabled the Danish peasant to 
distance all competitors in the markets of Europe. 
The nation, simple, honest, hardy, and industrious, 
free from the vices of caste, is one of the most con- 
spicuous examples extant of monarchical democracy. 
The days have long gone by since Denmark held the 
keys of the Sound and levied tax and toll on the ship- 
ping of the world as it passed through the Baltic to 
the North Sea. But it is worth while remembering 
that the freeing of the Sound was an international act, 
which, as far back as 1857, foreshadowed the collec- 
tive action of Europe. The royal House of Den- 
mark, which has given a King to Greece, an Empress 
to Russia, and a future Queen to the British Empire, 
may fairly claim to be one of the nerve-centres of the 
Continent. Nor can it be forgotten that in Thor- 
waldsen, Denmark has the supreme distinction of pro- 
ducing a sculptor whose work recalls the sculpture of 
ancient Greece. But there are hundreds of millions 
who have no opportunity of visiting Copenhagen, and 
to whom the genius of Thorwaldsen is but a thing they 
have heard but do not understand. The one name 
which is above every name among the sons of Den- 
mark, which is enshrined within the heart of every 
child in every land, is that of Plans Christian Ander- 
sen, whose fairy tales are the classics of every nursery, 



EURO PA 75 

and whose " Ugly Duckling " is one of the Birds of 
Paradise of the world. 

We may not agree with Victor Hugo in describing 
Paris as the Capital of Civilization, the City of Light, 
but Europe is unthinkable without France. The na- 
tion which for centuries was the eldest son of the 
Church, and which in 1789 became the standard- 
bearer of the Revolution, has ever played the fore- 
most role in European history. If in the last thirty 
years she has fallen from her pride of place, and no 
longer lords it in the Council Chamber, she is none 
the less an invaluable element in the comity of nations. 
The French novel has made the tour of the world, the 
French stage is the despair of all its rivals, and in 
painting and sculpture the French artists reign su- 
preme. There is a charm about the French character, 
a lucidity about French writing, a grace about France 
generally, to which other nations aspire in vain. 
France is the interpreter to the continent of ideas con- 
ceived in Germany or worked out in practical fashion 
in English-speaking lands. In all the arts and graces 
of life, especially in everything that tends to make the 
most of the body, whether in the food of it, the cloth- 
ing of it, or in the ministering to the universal in- 
stincts of the creature man, they leave the rest of the 
world helplessly behind. We English — a slow-witted 
race, who did not even know how to build a decent 
man-of-war until we captured one from the French 
and used it as a model in our dockyards — can never 
adequately acknowledge the debt which we owe to our 



76 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

neighbors. They preceded us in conquest round the 
world; they were the pioneers of empire both in Asia 
and America. But the supreme distinction of France 
in the commonwealth of nations to-day is seldom or 
never appreciated at its full significance. France is 
the one nation in the world which, fearlessly confront- 
ing with remorseless logic the root problems of the 
world, has decided apparently with irrevocable deter- 
mination that there are not more than thirty-nine mil- 
lions of Frenchmen needed as a necessary ingredient 
in the population of this planet. Other nations may 
increase and multiply and replenish the earth, but 
France has made up her mind that, having reached 
her appointed maximum, therewith she will be con- 
tent. ISTo temptation, not even the continual multi- 
plication of the surplus millions of German fighting- 
men on her eastern frontier, nor the envy occasioned 
by the immense expansion of the English race over 
the sea, is able to tempt her to forsake her appointed 
course. What is more remarkable is that this deter- 
mination can only be executed by asserting the right 
of will and reason to control in a realm that the 
Church, to which all French women belong, declares 
must be left absolutely to the chance of instinct on 
pain of everlasting damnation. France may or may 
not have chosen the better part; but the self-denying 
ordinance by which she deliberately excludes herself 
from competition with the multiplying races of the 
world has an aspect capable of being represented in 
the noblest light. 



EUROPA 77 

France! heroic France! France of St. Louis and 
of Jeanne d'Arc, is also France of Voltaire and of 
Diana of Poictiers, of Moliere and Dumas, of Louis 
Pasteur and Sarah Bernhardt! What other nation 
has produced so many of the highest realized ideals of 
human capacity on so many different lines? Even 
now, when the nation that built iSTotre Dame and 
Chartres Cathedral has taken to riveting together the 
girders which make the Eiffel Tower, France is still 
France, the glory and the despair of the human race. 

Space fails me to do more than cast a rapid glance 
at the smaller States, each of which nevertheless con- 
tributes elements of vital worth to the great European 
whole. Much indeed might be said of Holland, that 
land won by spadefuls from the sea, protected by dykes 
and drained by windmills, in order to provide a level 
spot of verdure on which the most phlegmatic and in- 
dustrious of mortal men could rear a sober common- 
wealth under a regal shade, and which, before it be- 
came a kingdom, had bidden high for the Empire of 
the Indies. Sea-power, now the sceptre of our sove- 
reignty, was grasped by the Dutch before it was seized 
by the English. It was only in the last two hundred 
years that the Netherlands fell behind us in the race 
for empire. 

Belgium, once the cock-pit of Europe, is now the 
most crowded hive of human industry. In no State 
are more men reared per acre, nowhere does patient 
husbandry win larger crops from indifferent soil; 
while in forge and factory and in mine the Belgian 



78 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

workmen challenge comparison with the world. Bel- 
gian competition is pressing us hard in Russia, in Per- 
sia, and in many lands where Belgian goods were re- 
cently unknown. 

At the other end of Europe there is Greece — a 
name, which, if nothing more than a name, is in itself 
an inspiration. The modern Greek, only too faithful 
an inheritor of many of the failings of his famous 
ancestors, has at least succeeded to the heritage of 
Olympus. No matter what may be his political feel- 
ings or his misfortune in war, the Greek is still the 
Greek, and behind the rabble rout of office-seekers 
which renders government impossible at Athens there 
still looms the majestic shades of those " lost gods and 
godlike men " which have kindled the imagination of 
our race since the days when Homer sang the tale of 
Troy divine. As the Acropolis is the crown of Athens 
so Hellas was the crown of the world, and that crown 
neither Turk, barbarian, nor the place-hunting poli- 
tician of modern Greece can ever take away. The 
myths, the traditions, and the history of Hellas form 
the brightest diamonds in the tiara of Europe. 

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon 
A® the best gem upon her zone. 

There remain to be noticed but two of all the band 
of nations whose States will form the European Union 
— England and Germany. These two Empires, which 
are at present sundered by a certain jarring dissonance 
that is all the more keenly felt because their tempera- 



EUROPA 79 

ments and ambitions are so much alike, are the Powers 
naturally marked out for promoting the complete real- 
ization of the ideal of the United States of Europe. 
Some months ago I took the liberty of describing the 
German Emperor as the Lord Chief Justice of Europe. 
It is a role which he alone is competent to fill. No 
other potentate on the Continent has either the en- 
ergy, the ambition, or the idealism capable of playing 
so great a role. Germany, which, after the travail 
of ages, has achieved her own unity, is of all the 
Powers the best fitted to undertake the leadership in 
the great work of completing the federation of Europe. 
Germany, also, from her central situation, is better 
placed than any other Power for undertaking the task. 
The traditions also of the Holy Roman Empire still 
linger around the Eagles of Germany, and the Empire 
is already the nucleus of a combination which places 
the forces of Central Europe, from Kiel to Brindisi, 
at the disposal of the Alliance. The Kaiser quite re- 
cently informed us that it is not his fault that more 
cordial relations have not been established between 
the Triple Alliance and France. As this is written he 
is about to visit St. Petersburg, when he will undoubt- 
edly endeavor to draw closer the ties which unite Ger- 
many to Russia. Should he succeed in his endeavors, 
the attainment of a practical federation of Europe 
without England would lie within his reach. 

But if Europe without France would be unthink- 
able, and if Europe without Germany would be 
Europe without the reflective brain and the mailed 



80 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

hand, what could we think of Europe without Eng- 
land? It does not become me as an Englishman to 
say much in praise of my own people. But this I may 
say, that Europe without England would be Europe 
without the one Power the expansive force of whose 
colonizing and maritime genius has converted Asia 
and Africa into European vassals and has secured the 
American and Australian continents as receptacles for 
the overflow of Europe's population. And this also 
may be added, that Europe without England would 
be Europe without the one Power whose sovereignty 
of the seas is nowhere exerted for the purpose of secur- 
ing privilege or favor for English flag or English trade. 
!Nor must it be forgotten that Europe without Eng- 
land would be Europe without the one country which 
for centuries has been the inviolable asylum alike of 
fugitive kings and of proscribed revolutionists, the 
sea-girt citadel of civil and religious liberty, whose 
Parliamentary institutions have been imitated more 
or less closely by almost every civilized land. Europe 
without England would be Europe without her wings, 
a Europe without the sacred shrine where in every age 
the genius of Human Liberty has guarded the undying 
flame of Freedom. 

The Federation of Europe at the present moment is 
like an embryo in the later stages of gestation. It is 
not yet ready to be born. But it has quickened with 
conscious life, and already the Continent feels the ap- 
proaching travail. 

Tt has been a slow process. The great births of 



EUROPA 81 

Time need great preparations. Under the founda- 
tions of the Cathedral of St. Isaac at St. Petersburg 
a whole forest of timber was sunk in piles before a 
basis strong enough for the mighty dome could be 
secured. The Federation of Europe is a temple far 
vaster than any pile of masonry put together by the 
hands of man. In the morass of the past its founda- 
tions have been reared, not upon the spoils of the for- 
est, but upon generation after generation of living men 
who have gone down into the void from red battlefield 
and pest-smitten camp and leaguered city in order that 
upon their bones the Destinies might lay the first 
courses of the new State. Carlyle's famous illustra- 
tion of the Russian regiment at the siege of Zeidnitz, 
which was deliberately marched into the fosse in order 
that those who followed after might march to victory 
over a pavement of human heads, represents only too 
faithfully the material on which these great world 
fabrics are reared. 

Nor is it only the individuals who have perished by 
the million, in blind struggling towards they knew not 
what, which have supplied the substratum upon which 
the United States of Europe were slowly to be built. 
Political systems, laboriously constructed by the wis- 
dom of statesmen and minutely elaborated to meet the 
ever-varying exigencies of their day, royal dynasties 
and great empires have all equally been flung into the 
abyss like rubble, after having served their turn to 
make foundation material for that which is to come. 
In preparing great political events Nature works with 



82 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

the same almost inconceivable patience and inexhaust- 
ible profusion that may be witnessed in the formation 
of the crust of the earth or in the evolution of a highly 
organized species. For, as Ibsen has said, Nature is 
not economical. And in the preparation of the foun- 
dation of Europe she has hurled into the deep trench 
so much of the finished workmanship of preceding 
ages as to provoke a comparison with the work of the 
barbarians, who made hearthstones of the statues chis- 
elled by the pupils of Praxiteles, and who utilized the 
matchless sculpture of the temples of the gods in the 
construction of their styes. 



PART II 

ENGLAND IN 1898 

CHAPTER I 

THE FASHODA FEVER 

"When I returned to England from my visit to the 
Continent, I was assured by a member of the Admin- 
istration that the country had just passed through an 
outburst of " drunken Imperialism." The phrase, 
coming from such a conservative quarter, was very 
significant. Things must have been pretty bad before 
such a man in such a position could have expressed 
himself in such a fashion to a political opponent. And 
they seem to have been pretty bad, judging from the 
impression which the English newspapers produced 
upon those who read them abroad. To judge from 
the papers, and from the telegrams and letters in for- 
eign newspapers which professed to give information 
as to how things were going in England, they could 
hardly have been worse in the great orgie of Jingoism, 
when Lord Beaconsfield was supposed to have brought 
back " Peace with honor " from Berlin. 

I left England on September 15th, when the news 
83 



84 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

had arrived of the presence of Marchand at Fashoda — 
news which was generally known, although not offici- 
ally confirmed. I came back immediately after the 
French Government had decided to recall him. I was 
therefore absent from England during the whole of the 
Fashoda fever, and my impressions of what took place 
during that somewhat excited period are necessarily 
the impressions of an onlooker from the outside. I 
saw England from the various foreign capitals with 
such lenses as were supplied by the telegrams in the 
foreign newspapers, and by the more or less belated 
English newspapers which followed me from place to 
place. Hence, whatever I say upon the subject must 
be taken, not as the judgment of one on the spot, who 
is on the inside track of things, but as a faithful ex- 
pression of how things looked to foreigners. 

The very day on which I left London I was assured 
by a prominent statesman, not in the Government, 
that we ought to be preparing for instant war with 
France. France had done " the unfriendly act," 
which, in diplomatic parlance, was equivalent to stat- 
ing that she had picked up the gauntlet flung down 
at her feet by Sir Edward Grey, speaking on behalf 
of the Rosebery Cabinet. Therefore there was noth- 
ing for it but to sound the alarum and prepare for 
instant excursions, invasions and war by land and by 
sea all over the world. Lord Salisbury was staying at 
Contrexeville, displaying, in the opinion of his im- 
patient censors, a criminal indifference to the peril of 
the Commonwealth. The night before I left Eng- 



THE FAS HOD A FEVER 85 

land I talked with one of the persons who may be re- 
garded as perhaps the most directly responsible for the 
efficiency of our first line of defence. I asked him if 
he was preparing for instant war. He innocently 
asked, " With whom?" and on my replying, " France," 
he blandly answered, " Why? " When I said, 
" Marchand," he shrugged his shoulders. " Non- 
sense," he said, "Marchand is in the air; he will go 
away when he is told to. It is not serious; it might 
have been if the Khalifa had not been smashed, but 
as he is smashed, and Marchand lies in the hollow of 
our hand, it is nonsense to talk of war." Such were 
the opinions of an insider and an outsider — who 
would be recognized, if I were at liberty to give their 
names, as about the best authorities to be found in the 
country. 

With such opposing views of best authorities in my 
wallet, I crossed the Channel, to find the moment I 
put foot in Belgium, that the Fashoda question had 
temporarily obscured that of the Peace Rescript. The 
brave Belgians were all agog to know whether or not 
England and France were going to war. Apart from 
the interest which they naturally felt in such a con- 
tingency, arising from the fact that a conflict between 
England and France would probably extend to the 
Rhine, when they would have to stand to arms in order 
to prevent the violation of their neutrality by the 
contending French and Germans, there was a more 
pei'sonal reason why the Belgians were interested in 
Fashoda. They had been roundly accused in the 



86 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

English press of having connived at " the unfriendly 
act " of the French. 

The case against the Congo State, as briefly stated 
by an English statesman, was that Captain Marchand 
had been allowed to invade and occupy Fashoda from 
the territory of the Congo Free State, although the 
Congo Government had formally recognized, together 
with Germany and Italy, that Fashoda was within the 
British sphere of influence, and that the British Gov- 
ernment had publicly declared in the House of Com- 
mons that it would regard such an occupation as an 
" unfriendly act." 

To this the Belgians replied hotly, and very much 
to the point — firstly, that declarations made in the 
House of Commons as to the way in which one Power 
will regard the possible action of another Power do 
not amount to the establishment of a state of war be- 
tween these two Powers; and, secondly, that as long 
as no state of war exists, the Congo State is compelled 
by its constitution and the conditions imposed by the 
Powers to place no obstacle in the way of free transit 
through its territory. Further, they maintained that 
they had no knowledge of any intention of Captain 
Marchand to commit any unfriendly act by attempting 
to exercise any authority in any place within the Brit- 
ish sphere of influence, and it was therefore absolutely 
impossible for them to have stopped him. 

To this the objectors replied that the Congo Free 
State must have had a very shrewd notion of what 
Captain Marchand was up to, and that they ought to 



THE FAS HOD A FEVER 87 

have given our Government a friendly hint as to what 
was going on. To this the Belgians answered tri- 
umphantly, " And how do you know that we did not? " 
That is a question which our Foreign Office alone can 
answer — the Foreign Office and the Queen. 

For everywhere and always when you begin to probe 
below the surface in foreign affairs, you come upon 
the all pervasive, subtle, and beneficent influence of 
the Queen. The King of the Belgians, who is in fact, 
if not in name, autocrat of the Congo, may or may 
not communicate the secrets of that Empire to the 
British Minister at Brussels. But it is an open secret 
that there are very few affairs of state upon which it 
is not his invariable rule to avail himself of the privi- 
lege accorded him by the tradition of his family of 
taking counsel with her Majesty. Every week, it is 
said, whenever the King of the Belgians is at home, 
he follows the example of his father by writing to the 
Queen. The first Leopold was the political mentor of 
the girl Queen. The second Leopold, having one of 
the shrewdest political heads in Europe, has always 
appreciated the advantage of profiting by the counsels 
of the aged lady who is the Nestor of the Sovereigns 
of Europe. It is probable, then, they say in Brussels, 
that if the King knew, the Queen knew; and if the 
Queen knew, we may depend upon it that the Sirdar 
was not taken unawares when the news came about 
the white men at Fashoda. 

The King, who had just arrived from a yachting 
expedition to the Azores, in the course of which he 



88 THE Vis IT ED STATES OF EUROPE 

met with a slight accident which compelled him to 
keep his room on his arrival at Ostend, preserved a 
diplomatic attitude of nescience. In reply to my in- 
quiry, I learnt that " His Majesty is totally ignorant 
of what has happened at Fashoda, and even whether 
anything has happened at Fashoda at all." The calm 
nonchalance with which the English assumed as a mat- 
ter of course that if Marchand was at Fashoda he 
would have " to git," was a subject of amazement not 
unmixed with alarm. 

" But it is war you will be making! " they said. 
" War! " we replied. " What nonsense! You don't 
call it war when a picnic party caught trespassing is 
courteously assisted to find its way home." " Oh, 
you English! Was there ever such a people! " was 
the exclamation, and there the matter stopped. 

The French point of view, as stated to me repeat- 
edly, was that the Southern Soudan was a kind of Tom 
Tiddler's ground, which England had abandoned to 
anarchy. So long as anarchy reigned on the Southern 
Nile, no declaration made by under-secretaries could 
deprive France of the right which she possessed as a 
civilized Power of restoring law and order when it 
was within the range of her armed hand so to do. The 
French repudiated as utterly untenable the theory 
that the sovereign right of any Power to exert its influ- 
ence on behalf of civilization could be arbitrarily cur- 
tailed by the ipse dixit of Great Britain. Sir Edward 
Grey's warning had been promptly met by protest on 
the part of the French Foreign Office, and they main- 



THE FASHODA FEVER 89 

tamed that we had no moral nor legal right to treat 
the derelict province in the Southern Soudan as shut 
out from all civilized influence merely because of our 
supposed reversionary rights. But the very people who 
took this position most vehemently were equally frank 
in declaring that after the stricken field of Omdurman 
the Marchand expedition was an anachronism, and the 
sooner it disappeared the better. " There is no one, 
believe me," said an eminent French journalist, who 
had excellent opportunities of knowing what he was 
talking about — " there is no one single Frenchman in 
the Government or out of it who does not know that 
after you reconquered Khartoum, Marchand's position 
became untenable, and the only question was how he 
was to be withdrawn. That is admitted on all hands; 
it ought not to be beyond the task of diplomacy to 
enable us to extract him without inflicting upon us a 
public humiliation. We made a false move and we 
admit it, and only wish to save our face." " And how 
can that be done? " I asked. " Oh, very easily," he 
replied ; " it can easily be arranged ; a little pourboire ! 
Delcasse's position is rather serious. If he were to 
retreat under menace, it might bring down the Gov- 
ernment, and we cannot afford to affront the Army 
by the public acceptance of any humiliation. We all 
heartily wish that Marchand had never reached Fa- 
shoda, but as he is there, we are equally anxious not to 
bring about a Ministerial crisis, or something that 
might be more serious than a Ministerial crisis, by our 
being compelled to eat humble pie. No, what is to 



90 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

be done is very simple. You can either ignore the 
Marchand expedition, regarding it as only a mission 
of civilization, which you are glad to welcome to the 
territory under your dominion, or you can grant 
Delcasse a little pourboire in the shape of some 
more or less empty concession anywhere you like all 
round the world, anything that would enable M. Del- 
casse to claim a diplomatic victory which would 
save his prestige with the country. At the same 
time you would get all that you want." So said 
my friend, expresing therein the feeling of his 
nation. 

In British official circles there seemed to be a gen- 
eral expectation that some such pourboire would be 
forthcoming, and that France would be let off cheap 
for having made a false move — " the unfritndly act " 
— just at the time when England had reestablished 
her prestige by smashing the Khalifa at Omdurman. 
On the other hand, there was a general expectation 
among the bystanders, especially the Americans, that 
the matter would not pass over so easily. " You may 
depend upon it," said one keen observer, " John Bull 
will take it out of the French this time, mark my words 
if he does not. After all, human nature is human na- 
ture, and the old gentleman has stood so much, you 
can't blame him greatly, if having got the French in 
a corner, he gives them beans. Germany smacked 
your face in the Transvaal, Russia wiped your eye at 
Port Arthur, the Turk has drawn a long nose at you 
in Constantinople, the French have been tricking you 



THE FASHODA FEVER 91 

in Madagascar and worrying you on the Niger, — be 
sure John Bull will pay them out now, if only to set 
himself up again in his own conceit. Let the French 
out quietly — don't you believe it! They have got to 
be kicked down the front doorsteps with full musical 
honors." That, or something like it, was what my 
American friend said to me, and events, it must be 
admitted, subsequently justified his estimate of the 
situation. 

The one easy and obvious way out of the difficulty 
was for Sir Edmond Monson to have accepted M. Del- 
casse's assurance that Marchand was only a missionary 
of civilization, to have welcomed him with effusion, 
to have declared that one reason why we had recon- 
quered the Soudan was in order to open it up to such 
gallant explorers as Marchand, and to offer the adven- 
turous little man all the assistance which all civilized 
Governments are called upon to render to shipwrecked 
travellers who may be stranded upon their coasts. 
Such an assurance could have been given with suffi- 
cient ironical emphasis to give the French clearly to 
understand that we appreciated to its full extent the 
unfriendly nature of the act which launched Captain 
Marchand on his bootless expedition. It would also 
have asserted in the strongest possible terms the in- 
herent strength of our position, a strength so great that 
it was ludicrous to assume the possibility that half a 
dozen Frenchmen with a tricolor could possibly raise 
the Fashoda question by sitting down on a marshy 
island in the Nile under the cover of our guns, under 



92 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

the shelter of our flag, and under the authority of the 
Sirdar. 

An American Peace Commissioner, with whom I 
was discussing the matter in Paris, said that an infinite 
deal of nonsense was talked about this matter of the 
flag. " When I went to visit Mount Sinai I travelled 
with a corthge, — bearers, escorts, etc. — and everywhere 
I always flew the Stars and Stripes. If the Sultan 
had been in a mind to pick a quarrel with me, he could 
have discovered that Uncle Sam was raising the Mount 
Sinai question because I had camped on the slopes of 
the famous mountain; but the Turk, not choosing to 
make a quarrel, ignored the flag, regarding it as the 
merely patriotic flourish of a traveller within his 
dominions. You could have done the same about 
Marchand if yo^^ had not wanted to pick a quarrel." 

When I went to Berlin, and from Berlin to St. 
Petersburg, I heard the same kind of talk always. By 
the time I reached Russia the Government had pub- 
lished Sir Edmond Monson's despatches; and, to use 
the vulgar phrase, all the fat was in the fire at once. 
It was difficult on the other side of the Continent to 
follow all the details of things in England; but one 
fact stood out conspicuously — namely, that the fore- 
cast of the American observer had been a correct one : 
John Bull was about to compel the French to undergo 
public humiliation before Europe. The disadvantage 
of making the immense concession that a strolling 
Frenchman with a few yards of bunting could raise 
the Fashoda question seemed to have been overlooked, 



TEE FAX HOD A FETE It S3 

compared with the advantage of having it out with 
the French. The Government having taken up this 
line, what could a patriotic Opposition do but support 
it? Nay, they rallied to the appeal all the more 
eagerly because of the opportunity which it afforded 
them of emphasizing their dislike of what they de- 
lighted to regard as the feebleness of Lord Salisbury's 
policy. Lord Rosebery led the way by a speech which 
showed that, although he had abandoned the leader- 
ship, he was still the leader of the Liberal Party. 
When he gave the word, great was the multitude of 
the preachers. Nearly every Liberal newspaper in 
the country wheeled into line, and of all the occupants 
of the front Opposition bench there was not one who 
ventured to dispute his authority. 

In discussing this extraordinary unanimity with a 
very clear-headed Liberal friend, after my return, he 
replied, "What other course could we take? No 
doubt your phrase that we should treat Marchand's 
expedition as a picnic party and welcome him to the 
shelter and protection of the British flag was the 
simple, the natural, and by far the easiest way out. 
No one felt that more strongly than myself. But in 
order to avail ourselves of it, it was necessary that Sir 
Edmund Monson and Lord Salisbury should have 
taken that line from the first, and, as politely and iron- 
ically as possible, smothered with ridicule the prepos- 
terous idea that an explorer in difficulties could, by 
the mere process of setting up his tent on British ter- 
ritorv. have raised anv question about sovereisrntv. anv 



M THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

more than if he had set up his tent on Dartmoor. But, 
unfortunately for us, the Government did not take 
that line. When they published Monson's dispatches, 
they made France the present of admitting that the 
Fashoda question had been raised, apparently for the 
purpose of driving them out of it. Under these cir- 
cumstances, what could a good patriot do? Surely 
nothing but what we did — namely, to insist that as 
Lord Salisbury had refused to take the short cut out, 
and had apparently made up his mind that the French 
had to be turned out neck and crop, the only thing 
that we could do was to bar the door against any more 
of those graceful concessions which would have made 
us ridiculous in the eyes of Europe and humiliated us 
before France. The fact was, the whole of the agita- 
tion in this country, from Lord Rosebery's speech 
downwards, instead of being a manifestation of confi- 
dence in the Government, was in reality the strongest 
possible illustration of the fact that we knew Ministers 
would not stand to their guns unless they were backed 
up from behind. If we had possessed a really strong 
Government, there would have been no need for 
bottle-holding them in the extraordinary fashion that 
was adopted; but, as we all knew our Salisbury, and 
knew that he would run away if he got the chance, it 
was necessary to adjure him by all our gods, every 
morning and every afternoon, that our unanimous 
opinion was backing him up, and that we would as- 
suredly trample him under foot if he tried on any 
more of his graceful concessions. Believe me," said 



THE FASHODA FEVER 05 

my friend, " that is the verite vraie of the whole affair. 
We had got a weak, fumbling Government, one sec- 
tion of which was always threatening war, and the 
other half was always backing down. We had stood 
that kind of thing till we could stand it no longer. 
Then you must remember that the French had been 
very irritating. They were firmly convinced that 
under no circumstances would Lord Salisbury stand 
firm. You could not talk to the politicians and jour- 
nalists of Paris without feeling that they, one and all, 
had got the ingrained conviction that at the last mo- 
ment Lord Salisbury's love of peace would overpower 
all other considerations, and he would give way rather 
than fight. So we upheld him, and barred the door 
in such a way behind him, that with the best will in 
the world he was shut up to war if the French refused 
to budge." That, no doubt, is the true explanation 
of the extraordinary rally of the Opposition, headed 
by Lord Rosebery, in support of an Administration 
concerning whose foreign policy each and all of the 
said " rallied," beginning with Lord Rosebery, had 
expressed publicly and privately their utter distrust 
and contempt. 

The effect of these tactics on the Continent, so far 
as it came under my observation, was to create the 
impression that the English were spoiling for a fight, 
that they had France on the hip, and they knew it, 
and were determined to force her to accept the grim 
alternatives — Back Down or Fight! A friend of 
mine to whom I had written from St. Petersburg ask- 



96 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

ing what chance there was of a national movement in 
favor of the Peace Conference, replied : " Your letter 
finds this city in a ferment," (he was writing on Octo- 
ber 15th), " and all our people pouring oil on flame, 
which makes my heart half sick, half hot. A cry for 
the Tsar's policy or for peace to-day would only drive 
the swine more violently down the steep. But the 
day will soon come for a deliverance." Three weeks 
later, I received another letter from London, dated 
Tiovember 4th, in reply to a suggestion that something 
should be done to back up the Peace Conference in 
England. " Back up the Conference, you say ! But 
I tell you the British lion is roaring at his loudest. I 
have never seen the noble brute so intractable; you 
must wait until the fever has passed out of the acute 
and delirious stage. I feel that this will not last. 
Lord Salisbury is the only man in England for your 
purpose, and he is blase and sceptical. He ought to 
take John Bull by the throat; nobody else can! The 
Liberal Party is wholly useless — a fearful saying, but 
true." 

When I got to Constantinople, I found that the 
general impression among the English there was en- 
tirely in accord with the estimate which I had formed 
of the situation in St. Petersburg; that is to say, they 
believed that an amount of fanfarronade had been 
made, apparently in order to force an open door, but 
really to force France to fight. Private letters from 
London showed that, however far Ministers and the 
responsible leaders of the Opposition might be from 



THE FAS HOD A FEVER 97 

desiring so great a crime, there were undoubtedly 
many among those who gave implse and momentum to 
the public movement who were passionately bent upon 
forcing on war. As one correspondent put it, " We 
are never likely to have such a chance again for set- 
tling old scores with France. It would be a thousand 
pities not to smash her, now we have got the chance." 
The chance, of course, consisted in the fact that the 
Russian Government was publicly committed to a 
policy of peace, that the raw which had existed for 
some years between London and Berlin had been 
healed, at least on the surface, that France was dis- 
tracted by the passions excited by the Dreyfus case, 
and that the inferiority of her fleet was so notorious 
that the immediate result of a declaration of war would 
have been the disappearance of the French flag from 
the ocean. 

When, in 1878, Lord Beaconsfield, having failed 
to fight his three campaigns against Russia for the 
deliverance of his friend and ally the Turk, made war 
on Afghanistan, a Liberal leader made a sarcastic re- 
mark which the recent clamor of the war party in 
England forcibly recalls to my mind. A gentleman 
was out driving one day, when his horse suddenly 
bolted and dashed frantically down the street. " Can't 
you stop him? " said the owner to his coachman. 
" No," said the Jehu, " he has got the bit between his 
teeth." " Then," said the gentleman philosophically, 
"take care and run into something cheap!" Last 
year France was alone, France was weak, France wa3 



98 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

distracted by internal troubles; therefore she was 
cheap enough to run into. And so all the barbaric 
tomtoms of the unregenerate Jingo were set beating; 
and Alfred Austin, who may be regarded as medicine- 
man and witch-doctor, crisped the British lion's mane, 
and made him roar to his heart's content. To out- 
siders, who looked at the matter across the Continent, 
this blatant bellicosity of the public seemed somewhat 
cowardly, with too much of " hit him because he's 
down " in it altogether to minister to the self-respect 
of the self-regarding Briton abroad. But to others 
who approached it from a different standpoint the folly 
of it seemed even more conspicuous than its meanness. 
For, the moment it was known that Russia would not 
support the French in going to war about Fashoda, it 
was certain that France would yield, and all this tre- 
mendous pounding of heavy artillery secured for us 
no permanent advantage. Fashoda was in our hands, 
for the French occupation was an occupation pour 
rire. When France gave way, she abandoned noth- 
ing that she could possibly have maintained ; whereas, 
the kicking of her downstairs with musical honors, 
while it gave us nothing that was not in our possession 
before we started, was not calculated to make France 
more easy and accommodating in dealing with us in a 
cause when she had a stronger case both in letter and 
in fact. In other words, the French would have gone 
out of Fashoda quietly if we had given them a little 
pourboire; whereas, now that we have insisted upon 
kicking them out publicly in the presence of the ser- 



THE FASHODA FEVER 99 

vants, the pourboire will have to be much larger. We 
may object, and swear that we shall never, never, never 
give any pourboire; but all negotiations are matters of 
give and take, and we may depend upon it the recent 
performance of the British lion has not been of a na- 
ture to make France more amenable to reason, or more 
desirous of straining a point in order to come to an 
amicable understanding with us on other questions 
where she is better able to hold her own. 

When I came to Rome I found that opinions varied. 
Among our countrymen there were those who gave 
full expression to the feeling that it was high time to 
teach these French a lesson, and that we had been put 
upon so much that we should now put our foot down 
and show that we could fight, and so forth; while 
others were impressed by the frightful possibility of 
the general war which seemed to be so lightly hazarded 
by the war-mongers of the press. One acute observer 
said to me, when we were discussing this question 
under the shadow of the Quirinal, " It has been a 
great deliverance. You may not believe me, but I 
am firmly convinced that no power in Italy could have 
held the Italian people back from declaring war on 
France the day after the first French fleet had been 
swept from the sea. Any Ministry that attempted 
to check such a movement would have been swept 
away at once. The Italians would have felt that their 
chance had come, and they would have struck in a 
moment at their hated foe." This may be so, or it 
may not; but that the contingency was believed to be 



100 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

not only possible, but probable, and even certain, was 
a grim reminder of the gigantic issues which trembled 
in the balance when our Government decided to reject 
the picnic-party solution, and elected to compel 
France, on risk of war, to atone for her " unfriendly 
act " by formally evacuating Fashoda. 

The theory that John Bull has been bested every 
time for years past in his negotiations with his neigh- 
bors, and that in the struggle for existence and the 
scrimmage for the world he has been badly worsted, 
is one of those delusions which seem to indicate that 
a morbid hypochondriasis has taken temporary posses- 
sion of a part of our people. There is one, and only 
one, region in which there are alarming signs of our 
not being able to hold our own. But, character- 
istically enough, this one serious danger is entirely 
ignored by those who are most prompt to sound the 
alarm. The notion that the statesmen and sovereigns 
of the Continent form their estimate of the fighting 
capacity of the British from the bellowing claque of 
London newspapers is one of the most extraordinary 
delusions that ever possessed the public mind. If any- 
thing were required to convince the Continental mind 
that English newspapers are utterly worthless, even 
as reporters of what is actually going on in their own 
country, there could hardly be a more striking instance 
than has been supplied by this Fashoda incident. For 
weeks, nay, for months, the British newspaper press 
stuffed its columns with the most alarming accounts 
of the feverish activity that prevailed in all our ar- 



THE FASHODA FEVER 101 

senals and dockyards. Every day brought forth new 
reports of fresh preparations for instant war. It was 
mobolization here, there and everywhere. The whole 
land seemed to be reverberating with the clangor of 
preparations for war. Again and again I was asked 
by most intelligent foreigners how many millions we 
had spent in making ready for war. I always 
shrugged my shoulders and said that I did not believe 
that the expenditure would exceed a hundred thousand 
pounds. The whole affair was a gigantic mise-en- 
scene, a game of bluff, played out to the end with 
astonishing intrepidity and nerve by gentlemen of my 
own profession, who felt it necessary to beat the big 
drum in order to keep their Government up to the 
mark. The utter amazement with which this explana- 
tion was received led me to justify the faith that was 
in me by two very important facts which had escaped 
public attention. One was that the Chief Constructor 
of the Navy, the man who has designed all our modern 
battleships, and who is the one man of all others whose 
presence would be indispensable at Whitehall were 
there any real question of the expenditure of millions 
on the Navy, was quietly enjoying his two months' 
holiday on Sir George Newnes's dahabeeyah on the 
Nile. The other was that the head of the Victualling 
Department, instead of working double tides at Ports- 
mouth in order to make ready for war, was placidly 
enjoying his holiday under the sunny skies of Italy. 
No one believed me. They were quite certain that 
we were pouring out millions like water in order to 



102 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

make ready for war. It was not, therefore, without 
a certain grim satisfaction that I noticed, when I ar- 
rived in Paris, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
had found it necessary to make public statement of the 
fact that, so far from having spent millions, the extra 
expenditure upon all the amazing manifestations of 
activity which our newspapers had reported had only 
amounted to £50,000, chiefly incurred in replacing 
the stocks of coal which had been depleted owing to 
the strike in South Wales. After such an anti-climax, 
our newspapers will have to beat a very big drum a 
very long time before any one abroad takes rat-tat-too 
seriously. 

The fact, of course, is that our Navy does not re- 
quire any tremendous expenditure in order to prepare 
it for war. The story goes that Von Moltke, after 
having dispatched his famous telegram, " Krieg, 
mobil! " that launched the German armies upon Im- 
perial France, was found by a friend amusing himself 
placidly as if nothing had happened. When his friend 
expressed his amazement, Moltke replied, "Everything 
has been arranged, mobilization is being carried out, 
there is nothing more at present for me to do." So 
it is with every well-equipped army or navy, and all 
this preternatural parade of fluster and fidget is an 
evidence, not of strength, but of weakness, a confes- 
sion of unreadiness, not the calm composure of con- 
scious strength. 

Looking at England and the manifestations of Eng- 
lish public opinion from abroad, it seemed as if the 



THE FASHODA FEVER 103 

country were suffering from a bad attack of fidgets. 
The element of John Bull's strength in times past has 
been due to the fact that he has been exceedingly 
tough, with a very robust faith in his own integrity 
and his own strength. The idea of good old John 
Bull caring a single straw for all the pin-pricks of his 
envious rivals is inconceivable. He cared no more 
for these things than his bovine prototype for the 
croaking of frogs in a marsh. But of late there seems 
to have grown up an astonishing school of hysterical 
patriots who imagine that they show their devotion to 
their country by the vehemence with which they bel- 
low when any puny Frenchman pricks them with a 
pin or with a pen. It would do these gentlemen good 
to see a bull-fight in Spain. It might teach them, if 
they were capable of understanding anything, that the 
whole art and mystery of circumventing the bull is to 
make him mad by pin-pricking him till he loses his 
self-possession. Then he rushes down upon the sword 
of the matador. The angry bellowings, the pawing of 
the sand of the arena, the tail-lashing, and the savage 
and fatal final rush upon his tormentors, reproduce, 
only too faithfully, the way in which many of our 
journalists would conduct the foreign policy of Eng- 
land. In the hubbub of Fleet Street and the cheers 
of the music-halls these considerations are often lost 
sight of; but nevertheless it is equally true of nations 
as of individuals, " in quietness and confidence shall 
be your strength." If our Navy had been weak, there 
might have been some excuse for endeavoring to make 



104 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

up for our feebleness by the shrilly outcries and bar- 
baric war whoop of the savage. But as our Navy is 
strong enough to sweep any possible adversary from 
the seas, it would be more sensible, to say nothing of 
being more Christian, if our Mohawks would spend 
less time over their war-paint, and cease to make night 
and day hideous by their yells. 

Of course, I shall be roundly assailed for saying 
monstrous things, in thus stating how the recent out- 
burst of English feeling appeared to an Englishman 
travelling abroad. But the fact is as I have stated it. 
I shall be told, no doubt with perfect truth, that noth- 
ing was further from Lord Salisbury's mind and will 
than a war with France. That is undoubtedly true. 
In the sanity and sober sense of the Prime Minister 
the Empire has found a strong refuge from the vio- 
lence of the Jingo faction. Neither would I for a 
moment assert that any responsible statesman, whether 
Liberal or Conservative, deliberately played for war, 
although most of them seemed to have taken the risk 
of war with a very light heart. 

But it is not there that the mischief lay. "When it 
was decided to publish Monson's dispatches, and prac- 
tically to appeal for a patriotic demonstration against 
France, the Ministers called a spirit from the vasty 
deep to serve their purpose which they might have 
found it very difficult to cope with when they wished 
to dispense with its assistance. To excite the war pas- 
sion in a people so warlike as the English is a crime 
against civilization, which can only be justified, as 



THE FASHODA FEY Eli 105 

homicide is justified, by absolute necessity. The oc- 
casion was tempting and the moment propitious for 
such an appeal. The Sirdar with his victorious troops, 
fresh from the reconquest of the Soudan, had arrived 
in England in the midst of the Fashoda fever. Not 
even the most envious rival could deny that Sir Her- 
bert Kitchener had displayed in an eminent degree 
the great administrative and military qualities which 
have enabled men of our race to build up the British 
Empire. He had fought and won two great battles 
against a saveage foe, and he had reestablished British 
authority in the city of the Soudan, which will be for 
ever associated with the greatest humiliation inflicted 
on England in our time. There was, therefore, ample 
explanation of the enthusiastic welcome with which 
he was received at home. At the same time, those 
who saw things from the outside could not help a cer- 
tain feeling of regret at the lack of perspective dis- 
played in the extraordinary demonstration with which 
the Sirdar and his men were received. What more 
could have been done to mark our national gratitude 
and esteem if he had been Wellington returning from 
a ten years' death-grapple with the Despot of the Con- 
tinent? Here, again, there was visible that absence of 
dignity and reserve which used to be so characteristic 
of our people. The almost Roman triumph which was 
accorded to the Sirdar naturally ministered to the pas- 
sions which made a certain section of our people fall 
an easy prey to their besetting sin. Hence there 
sprang up many who openly and constantly talked of a 



106 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

war with France. " Now is our chance ; we should be 
fools to miss it. We shall never have such an oppor- 
tunity again of settling with her once for all." 

Shortly after my return, I was in the editorial office 
of a well-known newspaper, where we were talking 
about peace and war. The editor remarked that he 
was almost the only person on his staff who had not 
wanted to have " a slip into France," and appealed for 
confirmation to his assistant, who remarked that nine 
out of ten persons whom he met even then (this was 
at the beginning of December) were much disap- 
pointed that we had not " had it out with France." 
" You must be keeping very bad company," I re- 
marked. " Not at all," he said; " I go in and out of 
the City a great deal, and certainly that is the impres- 
sion that I gain from what I hear from the people I 
meet." " The City! " I exclaimed; " but the City of 
London, whenever a war fever is in the air, is one of 
the worst places in the world. Don't you know that 
when a war fever breaks out the devil always sets up 
his headquarters in the city. He has another favorite 
haunt — the clubs of Pall Mall; and he divides his time 
between the two." " Yes," said the editor, " and as 
he goes from one to the other, he must of necessity 
pass most of his time in Fleet Street." The observa- 
tion was just, for of all energetic children of the 
devil the London pressman, like the journalist of 
Paris, when the cannon-thunder is in the air, is about 
the worst. It was so in 1878; it has been so in 1898. 
T was repeating this conversation to a well-known pub- 



TEE FASEODA FEVER 107 

lie man, who smiled and added: " Yes, no doubt; the 
Evil One spends much of his time in perambulating 
Fleet Street; but he always has a chop and a cup of 
tea in Printing-house Square." 

It would be an interesting subject for discussion as 
to how far the spectacle of the easy victories won by 
our American kinsfolk over the Spanish fleet tended 
to create, or at any rate to strengthen, this ground- 
swel i of the lower passions of the English nature. Cer- 
tainly, it seemed somewhat unnatural to English- 
speaking men on this side of the sea that English- 
speaking men on the other side of the sea should have 
won great sea-fights, and mopped up the navies of a 
moribund Latin Empire, while we, with the greatest 
fleet in the world, were standing by with folded arms, 
enduring the taunts of the boulevard press. The Old 
Adam is strong in the average Briton. His fingers 
began to itch for a fight, and the talk that has gone on, 
the echoes of which were still audible when I returned 
to England, showed an unmistakable readiness on the 
part of many of our people to fight, with or without a 
justification, should an opportunity arise, especially 
when it was what, in the slang of the street, might be 
regarded as " a sure thing." 

This readiness on the part of our people to fight for 
mere fighting's sake is much better appreciated on the 
Continent than it is in England. At home we plume 
ourselves so greatly upon our love for peace, that many 
of us have actually come to the conclusion that John 
Bull when seen from abroad is a huge, fat, overgrown 



108 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

sheep. Nothing could be further from the reality of 
things. A Russian poet once called us " the gray wolf 
of the Northern Seas/' and that phrase embodies accu- 
rately enough the impression of other European na- 
tions as to our real character. We may hate war, but 
we have made more wars in the last fifty years than all 
the other nations put together. They might be little 
wars, but, nevertheless, they were wars. The chances 
that an English soldier will see action and kill his man 
are very many times greater than that a similar fate 
will befall any soldier on the Continent. As for am- 
bition and aggression, there is not, in the opinion of 
Europeans, any Power in the universe that is so im- 
perious and so aggressive as Great Britain. Of course, 
we repudiate this indignantly, but the cynical and 
sceptical foreigner shrugs his shoulders, and replies, 
" To begin with, you claim as your natural birthright 
the dominion of the seas — that is to say, two-thirds at 
least of the planet belong to you in fee simple. Next, 
if you look round the world, you will find that you 
have snapped up every bit of the land that is worth 
having either for colonizing or for trade. You have 
taken all the vantage spots of all the continents, and if 
any one of us ventures to pick up any of your leavings, 
there is immediately a howl raised throughout the 
English-speaking world, and imperious demands are 
made that you must immediately take something else, 
in order to balance our pickings. The net result is 
that though you started with much more territory 
abroad than all of us put together, you have gone on 



TEE FASEODA FEVER 109 

multiplying your additions until there is practically 
nothing left for other people. As for Russian aggres- 
sion, of which you are always talking, it is indeed a 
case of Satan reproving sin. In the last fifteen years, 
for every square mile of territory which Russia has 
annexed, you have annexed a hundred, and we might 
multiply that by a thousand if you were to take into 
account the spheres of influence which you have 
established." * 

Yet, notwithstanding all this, which is no overstate- 
ment of things as they are, nothing is so common as 

* Speaking on this subject when he resigned the Liberal 
leadership, Lord Rosebery said: — " You have acquired so 
enormous a mass of territory that it will be years before you 
can settle it, or control it, or make it capable of defence, or 
make it amenable to the arts of your administration. Have 
yon any notion what it is that you have added to the Em- 
pire in the last few years? I have taken the trouble to make 
a computation which I believe to be correct. In twelve 
years you have added to the Empire, whemer in the shape of 
actual annexation, or of dominion, or of what is called the 
sphere of influence, 2,600,000 square miles of territory. But 
just compare these figures. It will show you more clearly 
what you have done. The area of the United Kingdom — 
England, Scotland, aWles, Ireland, the Channel Islands, and 
so forth*— is 120,000 square miles. Therefore, to the 120,000 
square miles of the United Kingdom, which i9 the heart of 
your Empire, you have added in the last twelve years 
twenty-two areas as large as that of the United Kingdom 
itself. That marks out for many years a policy from which 
you cannot depart if you would. You may be compelled to 
draw the sword — I hope you may not be — but the foreign 
policy of Great Britain, until this territory is consolidated, 
filled up, settled, and civilized, must inevitably be a policy 
of peace." 



110 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

to find in English newspapers perpetual lamentations 
over the extent to which we have lost our position in 
the world, owing, be it remarked, to our meekness, our 
patience, our unwillingness to fight, and scrupulous 
observance of our neighbors' landmarks! 

F remember once being visited by a poor woman 
whose mind was diseased, and who came to inform me 
of a great and terrible disaster that had overtaken her. 
She referred to it in terms of such unaffected horror, 
that it was some time before I could induce her to tell 
me the nature of the terrible evil from which she was 
suffering. At last it came out. Owing to the machin- 
ations of a certain enemy of hers, who had practised 
his foul arts in order to injure her, the whole of her 
inside was undergoing a mysterious change by which 
it was being transformed into the inside of a dog. 
Nothing that I could say could persuade her that she 
was mistaken. To arguments and to ridicule she was 
utterly impervious; she knew that her inside was be- 
coming a dog's inside, and the process would soon be 
complete, unless something — she did not know what 
— could be done in order to break the spell and restore 
her to her natural condition. I have often thought 
of this poor lunatic when reading English papers. 
They seem to imagine that, by some marvellous magi- 
cal incantation of some wizard of peace, the whole of 
the interior of honest John Bull is being converted 
into the " innards " of a sheep. They are possessed 
with the idea, the thought of the transformation which 
tbey are undergoing has got upon their nerves, and in 



THE FASEODA FEVER 111 

order to counteract it they are continually clamoring 
for something to be done, some sabres to be rattled, or 
some drums to be beaten, or volleys to be fired. Not 
unless the cannon-thunder sounds in their ears, morn- 
ing, noon, and night, can they be persuaded that they 
are not becoming the sheep of their imagination. 
It is a mental malady and a very distressing one, 
especially for their neighbors, who know that John 
Bull, so far from being a sheep at heart, is in reality 
one of the most pugnacious, self-assertive entities 
that the world contains. He is only too reckless 
with his fists, and only too regardless of his neighbors' 
toes. 

Side by side with this pugnacious element, which 
is ever prompt to respond to outward stimulus, there 
is another characteristic of our people which is even 
more unlovely. There is, after all, a certain amount 
of heroism in the spectacle of a man who, in a good 
cause or ill, is willing to go forth and kill or be killed 
in support of his country's cause. But that element 
of greatness is absolutely absent from those who 
clamor for war much as the Roman mob clamored for 
gladatorial games in the Amphitheatre. Papers are 
dull unless there is some fighting going on somewhere ; 
therefore, " the war for our money." Our people have 
not the conscription, and the people who write in the 
newspapers, as the Emperor of Russia once somewhat 
bitterly and sarcastically remarked, " are never sent 
to fight in the first line." It is now as it was when 
Coleridge wrote: — 



112 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

Secure from actual warfare, we have loved 
To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war! 
We — this whole people — have been clamorous 
For war and bloodshed; animating sports, 
The which we pay for as a thing to talk of, 
Spectators, and not combatants. 

All the while that our people have been surrender- 
ing themselves to the unholy passion of military glory, 
and revelling in the thought that they were strong 
enough to whip France, and, in conjunction with the 
United States, to rule the world, they have been ob- 
livious to the real danger which threatens our suprem- 
acy, nay, even our very existence as a nation. We 
are the workshop of the world; we do not grow food 
enough in our island to feed our people for more than 
one-third or one-fourth of the year. We earn our 
daily bread, literally in very real fashion, by the fact 
that we are able to command the markets of the world 
by the excellence of our manufactures, the skill of our 
workmen, and the cheapness with which we produce 
our goods. This is the base, the solid foundation of 
our Imperial grandeur. If the factory and the work- 
shop are not busy, neither army or navy would be able 
to keep us in existence. Yet each of the three great 
conditions upon which our commercial ascendency 
rests is threatened without the mass of our people giv- 
ing it even a thought. Whether it is in the excellence 
of our manufactures, the skill of our workmen, or in 
the economy of our methods of production, we iare 
losing our premier position. Although we have been 
extending our Empire and pegging out claims for 



THE FASHODA FEVER 113 

future colonies and dependencies with the utmost per- 
tinacity and courage, the tell-tale statistics of our for- 
eign trade remain obstinately silent as to the com- 
mercial benefits which we have gained therefrom. A 
thousand pin-pricks, such as those which so irritated 
our journalists, are as nothing compared with the one 
portentous fact that for the last ten years our trade 
has practically remained at a standstill. The trade 
of Germany has increased; the trade of the United 
States has gone up by leaps and bounds, until it has 
now taken the first place in the world's records. But 
our trade remains stationary. Instead of concentrat- 
ing our attention upon the removal of the causes which 
have enabled our competitors to beat us in our own 
markets, and gradually to threaten us with extinction 
in the neutral markets, we have fretted and fumed 
about prestige and " open doors " to impasses, and we 
know not what. The real weakness is that of the 
heart and the brain — of the interior, not of the remote 
extremities. We have grown too comfortable to exert 
ourselves and to hold our own in the real struggle for 
existence, which is waged, not in the battlefield, but 
in the markets of the world. We spend millions over 
armaments, and grudge thousands for education. We 
send military expeditions to the uttermost ends of the 
world, but grudge the expense requisite to make any 
careful or systematic use of the money which we de- 
vote for the promotion of technical education. Our 
trade is periodically paralayzed by insensate disputes 
between masters and men, the idea being that as it 



. jg& && ■ 



114 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

was said that France was rich enough to pay for her 
glory, so we are rich enough to afford to play ducks 
and drakes with our business. For the moment all 
goes well; there is a boom in trade; the cry of the 
unemployed is no longer heard in our streets. But 
booms are temporary; depression follows inflation as 
night follows day, and then there will be an evil look- 
out for our people and for our country, unless our 
statesmen are wise betimes, and, turning their atten- 
tion from the barren competition of armaments and 
of conquests, are, in the words of Count Muravieff, 
" to utilize for productive purposes the wealth which 
is now exhausted in a ruinous and, to a great extent, 
useless competition for increasing the powers of 
destruction." 



CHAPTER II 



THE CHINESE PUZZLE 



The causa causans of my visit to Russia was not 
the Peace Rescript, which, at the time when I decided 
on my journey, had not appeared. My real objective 
was quite other than that. Ten years before, at the 
close of my audience with the late Emperor Alexander 
III., he invited me to return to Russia to see him 
again, should relations between Russia and England 
threaten to become strained. During his lifetime 
there was no occasion to act upon this invitation, but 
in the midsummer of this year it seemed as if the occa- 
sion had arisen which, ten years before, had been dis- 
cussed as a conceivable but regrettable possibility. 

Until the last year or two the one great source of 
difficulties between England and Russia was the slow 
decay of the Ottoman Empire. The difficulty of har- 
monizing our clashing interests, or what were believed 
to be clashing interests, in the east of Europe has suf- 
ficed for the last twenty years to employ the energies 
of the diplomats of London and St. Petersburg. Of 
late, the troubles of Turkish origin have steadily 
diminished. Russia under Prince Lobanoff went far 
in the direction of adopting the policy of Lord Bea- 

115 



116 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

consfield, by which the maintenance of the indepen- 
dence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire was 
treated as the interest of a civilized European Power. 
On the other hand, Britain, under the influence of Mr. 
Gladstone's enthusiasm, and the ever-increasing force 
of facts, had gone far towards adopting the traditional 
policy of Russia as protector of the Christians of the 
East. But neither country was sufficiently at home 
in its exchanged role to feel firm enough on the new 
ground to adopt any policy likely to bring them into 
collision in the Levant. When the Armenian atroci- 
ties reached their acute stage, the divergence of opin- 
ion between the two countries came to a head. But 
England was not sufficiently Gladstonian nor Russia 
sufficiently Beaconsfieldian for either Empire to push 
its views to such an extreme as to endanger the general 
peace. So the Armenians were sacrificed, and Abdul 
chortled in his joy over the paralysis of Europe, and 
blessed Allah for the efficient protection of Prince 
Lobanoff, who was not ashamed to wear on his Musco- 
vite bosom a decoration which he received from the 
Great Assassin. But just when the good people who 
were willing to sacrifice hecatombs of Eastern Chris- 
tians for the sake of a quiet life were congratulating 
themselves upon the fact that peace reigned in Ar- 
menia, another question rose in the Further East 
which threatened to revive and accentuate the differ- 
ences between the two Empires. The rivalry of diplo- 
matists, which had almost died out at Stamboul, shot 
up into new and intenser activity in Pekin. The Sick 



THE CHINESE PUZZLE 117 

Man of Europe ceased to command attention, for the 
eyes of the world were turned to the Sick Man of Asia, 
whose demise appeared to be rapidly approaching. 

It was a false alarm, but for the time it lasted it was 
all the same as if it were true. Our experience of 
Turkey might have taught us to take the crisis in 
China a little more philosophically. At any time dur- 
ing this century the acutest observers of men and af- 
fairs at Constantinople have expressed their opinion 
that the Sick Man was very sick, sick even unto death. 
Sick he was, no doubt, and sick unto death; but his 
death was not yet. Over and over again has been re- 
peated the warning which, nevertheless, we are con- 
stantly forgetting, that old empires which have lasted 
for hundreds of years are much too toughly put to- 
gether to go to pieces like a pack of cards before the 
first flip of a hostile finger. Threatened empires, like 
threatened men, live long. Generation after genera- 
tion of ardent souls have lived and died in the fervent 
faith that that great edifice of iniquity which the Otto- 
man horde reared upon human skulls and watered by 
human blood was about to pass away and defile the 
world no more; but the last year of the century finds 
the Turk still in possession of Stamboul, still lording 
it over the heritage of the Christian East, still living, 
and likely to live until all those who wish him dead 
and gone have themselves been gathered to the vast 
majority. 

Notwithstanding this great object-lesson as to the 
tenacity of life in old-established empires, the British 



118 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

public no sooner heard that the Chinese Government 
was sick, and very sick, than they incontinently 
jumped to the conclusion that the Sick Man of Asia 
was going to die, and that we must bestir ourselves if 
we wished to obtain a share of his intestate estate. As 
a matter of fact, the Yellow Man may be sick, but he 
is very far removed from the door of death. The co- 
hesion and unity of that vast conglomerate of human- 
ity which stretches from Siberia to Burma, and from 
the Yellow Sea to Turkestan, depends far more upon 
the moral influence of its Government than upon the 
material nexus of armies and navies and police; and a 
moral influence once firmly established over four hun- 
dred millions of men is far too deeply rooted to be 
pulled up like a garden weed by the finger and thumb 
of a victorious Power. ~No doubt the Chinese cut a 
very poor figure in the war with Japan. Their fleet 
vanished from the sea, their army was defeated in 
every battle, and they were compelled to cede to the 
victorious Japanese whatever their victor chose to de- 
mand. When the war was over, the Japanese found 
themselves in possession of the two great strongholds 
of "VVei-TIai-Wei and Port Arthur, and all the world 
hailed them as the rising Power of the Far East. The 
blow to Chinese prestige in Europe and America was 
immense, but in China itself the loss of the fleet and 
the cession of the northern fortresses affected the dim 
myriads of yellow men in China about as much as the 
trimming of a man's beard affects his digestion. Prob- 
ably ninety-nine out of every hundred never so much 



THE CHINESE PUZZLE 119 

as knew that a war had taken place, and those who 
had heard the rumor of hostility are probably to this 
day in a state of blissful ignorance as to which Power 
triumphed in the fray. The moral authority of the 
Government at Pekin remains as supreme — with 
never a soldier to back it or a gunboat to fly its flag — 
as it was before the war broke out. 

All this was forgotten and ignored even by those 
who should have known much better. The Russians, 
it must be admitted, showed a sounder appreciation of 
the tenacity of Chinese vitality than did the other 
Powers. With the aid of Germany and France they 
cleared the Japanese off the Asiatic mainland and re- 
stored the territorial integrity of China. There the 
matter might have remained without any complication 
arising had it not been for the uncontrollable outburst 
of the colonial fever in Germany. The opportune 
murder of some German missionaries in the province 
of Shantung afforded the German Emperor a welcome 
pretext for seizing a portion of Chinese territory. 
Before seizing Kiao-Chau he cautiously approached 
the Russian Emperor by tentative inquiries behind 
which his real object was carefully concealed. Russia 
had the right of anchoring her warships in the port of 
Kiao-Chau. Would the Emperor object if Germany 
were to share that privilege? ~No direct answer was 
given at first, but ultimately it was understood that 
Russia would have no objection to share that privilege 
with Germany. So the first preliminary was gained. 
The second preliminary was to ascertain whether 



120 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

Russia would have any objection to Germany's exact- 
ing reparation for the murder of her missionaries. 
The offhand answer was returned: "Certainly not. 
Russia could have no objection to the exaction of a rep- 
aration." With these two assurances, one relating to 
the anchoring of German ships in the harbor of Kiao- 
Chau, and the other to the exaction of reparation for 
the murder of German missionaries, the German Em- 
peror made his great coup. Kiao-Chau was seized 
and occupied, at first under the pretext of demanding 
reparation for the murder of German missionaries. 
Not until afterwards was it revealed that the repara- 
tion demanded included the leasing or virtual cession 
of the province of Kiao-Chau to the German Emperor. 
It is believed, and even to this day it is sometimes 
asserted, that the action of Germany in seizing Kiao- 
Chau was prearranged beforehand with Russia. Noth- 
ing could be further from the fact. The seizure of 
Kiao-Chau under the mask of a demand for reparation 
for the murder of German missionaries was, and is, 
bitterly resented in Russia as a bit of sharp practice 
of which they have ample ground to complain. So 
intense, indeed, was the irritation created by the mere 
suspicion of the German design, that I was told in 
Berlin a telegram had been despatched to Shanghai 
countermanding Admiral Diedrich's orders. Unfor- 
tunately the Admiral had sailed before the telegram 
arrived, and Europe was confronted with the fait 
accompli of the German occupation of Kiao-Chau. 
Nothing could have been more opposed to the wishes 



THE CHINESE PUZZLE 121 

of Russia. Russia's policy was the maintenance of 
the integrity of the Chinese Empire. In defence of 
that integrity the Japanese at the very end of a vic- 
torious war had been compelled under virtual threat 
of war to clear out of the Liaotong Peninsula; and now 
one of the Powers by which the integrity of China had 
been vindicated against the Japanese became herself 
the aggressor and despoiler of Chinese territory. If 
at that time Russia and England had but been on 
cordial terms of mutual confidence, it is probable that 
concerted action on the part of all the other Powers 
would have compelled Germany to discover that her 
occupation of Kiao-Chau was temporary and would 
cease the moment the Chinese paid compensation for 
the murdered missionaries. Unfortunately the Pow- 
ers all mistrusted each other, and concerted action was 
regarded as out of the question. Even without con- 
cert the question was considered as to whether or not 
Russia should insist upon the evacuation of Kiao- 
Chau; and it was only when, upon grave deliberation, 
it was decided that Germany would not clear out with- 
out a war, that it was resolved at St. Petersburg to 
acquiesce in the inevitable and seek compensation else- 
where. The Russians may have been right, or they 
may have been wrong in their belief that the Germans 
could not have been turned out without a war. If 
they were right, no one can doubt that in their own 
and in the interest of the general European peace they 
did well to swallow the bitter mouthful and make the 
best of it. It is indeed difficult to believe that the 



im THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

German Emperor or the German people would have 
accepted the frightful risk of a European war in order 
to persist in seizing a port on the Chinese littoral. But 
it is only just to admit that the opinion arrived at by 
the Russians as to the impossibility of turning the 
Germans out of Kiao-Chau except by a war shared 
by the best authorities in Europe. 

Rightly or wrongly the Russians decided that it was 
not worth while to risk a war for the sake of Kiao- 
Chau; but it was felt that the action of Germany had 
materially changed the situation. It was no longer 
possible to maintain formally the integrity of China. 
That integrity had been violated by the " mailed fist " 
which had seized possession of Kiao-Chau. Germany 
had established herself in force, if not within striking 
distance, at least within easy proximity to Pekin. The 
example of the ease with which the Chinese could be 
plundered by any one who chose to pick their pockets 
was likely to prove contagious. No one knew what 
would be the next step. The signal once having been 
hoisted for the partition of China, it was felt at St. 
Petersburg that any day might bring the news of a 
fresh seizure of Chinese territory. 

If by some exercise of imagination we could realize 
the conception of England which has been formed by, 
let us say, the King of Uganda, we should probably 
find that it would compare not unfavorably with the 
conception which the British public has formed about 
Russia. To the King of Uganda England is an en- 
tity, a unit. England's policy, whether for peace or 



THE CHINESE PUZZLE 123 

for war, for annexation or for evacuation, is to liim 
the expression of a single will. He does not discrim- 
inate between Liberals and Conservatives, between 
Government and Opposition. He knows nothing of 
those details which are imperceptible from a great dis- 
tance. Hence he has probably strange ideas concern- 
ing the vacillations, inconsistencies and bad faith of 
the Power with which he has to do. In the same way, 
while we speak about Russia, we imagine the great 
Empire of one hundred and twenty millions as a unit. 
We speak of its Government as if it were the will of 
a single man being brought to bear continuously upon 
the problem in question. In reality the Russian Gov- 
ernment, like every other state, is a composite body. 
It is swayed from time to time by opposing tendencies 
which find their embodiment not in parties so much 
as in ministerial groups, which make themselves more 
or less articulate exponents of the contending drifts of 
sentiment. Hence there is often an appearance of 
vacillation or of inconsistency, and sometimes of down- 
right bad faith, which would be perfectly understood 
if we could but abandon what may be called the " King 
of IJgunda" point of view in considering Russian ques- 
tions. The way in which the Chinese question was 
dealt with after the seizure of Kiao-Chau is an appo- 
site illustration of the inadequacy of the Uganda 
method for appreciating what actually happened. As 
soon as the German flag was hoisted over Kiao-Chau, 
the Russians with one consent believed that the one 
thing which they dreaded more than anything — a 



124 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

scramble for the inheritance of the Sick Man of Asia 
— was about to begin, and their eyes turned instinct- 
ively to the one great Power whose armed force, con- 
stantly mobilized on a war footing, hovered within 
striking distance of Port Arthur. 

Strange though it may seem to Englishmen who 
alternately plume themselves upon the pharisaieal vir- 
tue with which they abstain from picking and stealing, 
and display a Nebuchadnezzar-like pride in having 
picked out all the plums from the world's pie, the Rus- 
sians are firmly convinced that whenever there is a 
scramble for any corner lots in the universe, John Bull 
is dead sure to be first on the spot. Now there is one 
particular corner lot in China which the Eussians 
could not and ought not to allow to pass into any other 
hands than their own. This particular corner lot in 
question was Port Arthur, with the related port of 
Talienwan. Port Arthur and Talienwan stand in 
pretty much the same relation to each other as the 
Spithead ports, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight 
stand to the docks of Southampton. Talienwan is the 
only ice-free port through which Russia can obtain 
access to the Pacific at all seasons of the year. It was 
therefore absolutely necessary for the future develop- 
ment of their vast Siberian Empire that the port of 
Talienwan should be available as the terminus of their 
great trans-Continental line. The reasonableness of 
this opinion had been publicly recognized by Mr. Bal- 
four, who, in a famous speech, had declared that so far 
from England's having any objection to Russia's ob- 



THE CHINESE PUZZLE 125 

taming an ice-free port in the Pacific, nothing was 
more to be desired in the interests of British trade than 
that Russia should have such a port, and the British 
Government therefore regarded her natural ambition 
to have a port in ice-free waters with satisfaction and 
approval. The Russians naturally took note of this 
declaration with much satisfaction; and inasmuch as 
Talienwan was the only ice-free port along that coast, 
they regarded Mr. Balfour's speech as being equiva- 
lent to a virtual handing over of Talienwan to the Rus- 
sion Government, whenever the railway had made suf- 
ficient progress to justify a demand for the cession of 
such a position on the coast. Here the Russians may 
have been mistaken or they may not. Mr. Balfour's 
words seemed to them sufficiently explicit ; and no one 
who reads them to-day can marvel that the Russians 
took them to mean exactly what they seemed to say, 
for it is no use pretending that when you invite an- 
other Power to " have " a port, you mean that she is 
simply to enjoy in common with all the other Powers 
a right of way through a port belonging to someone 
else. It is well to bear this in mind, because it is the 
key to much, if not to everything, that happened in 
the spring of last year. 

When the German flag was hoisted over Kiao-Chau, 
opinion in the Russian capital was divided. One sec- 
tion, which may be regarded as having its headquarters 
in the Foreign Office, held that it was absolutely neces- 
sary for the preservation of Russia's vital interests for 
her to forestall the attempt to seize Port Arthur on the 



126 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

part of any other Power. This school maintained that 
England was certain to seize Port Arthur either di- 
rectly herself or indirectly through the Americans or 
the Japanese. In any case, Port Arthur was much 
too valuable a jewel to be left lying about loose, with 
the signal flying from Kiao-Chau for the general 
scramble. That was the view of one school. An 
altogether different opinion prevailed in the section 
which had as its centre and head the Ministry of Fi- 
nance. Here it was maintained that Lord Salisbury 
could be relied upon not to seize Port Arthur, and that 
Mr. Balfour, when he made his famous declaration as 
to the right of Russia to an ice-free port, was speaking 
in good faith, and meant exactly what he said. They 
maintained, therefore, that seeing the right of Russia 
to Talienwan had been recognized by England, and 
that Port Arthur was to all intents and purposes an 
integral part of Talienwan — for Port Arthur was un- 
tenable with Talienwan in other hands — it was better 
to let things remain as they were, to trust to England's 
declarations and to still hold on to the old formula of 
the integrity of China despite the inroad upon that 
integrity which had been made by Germany. This 
school violently opposed the occupation of Port 
Arthur. They contended that to occupy such a posi- 
tion would make Russia a partaker in the guilt and 
responsibility of the partition of China, the prevention 
of which had been the steady aim of Russian policy. 
They maintained that to occupy Port Arthur would 
set two signals flying, instead of one, for the partition 



THE CHINESE PUZZLE 127 

of China, and would challenge the other Powers, not- 
ably England, to join in the game of grab. It was 
further insisted upon with great force, and, as the re- 
sult proved, with truth, that it would be impossible to 
take possession of Port Arthur without having to 
square the Japanese, and that this could only be done 
by the abandonment of Russia's vantage ground in 
Korea. Further, the railway was not built, and 
would not be built for some years, during which the 
status quo might remain. To occupy Port Arthur 
would at once make Russia vulnerable. It would en- 
tail an enormous expenditure, which the Treasury 
could ill afford, for arming of the ports, and a still 
more gigantic outlay in the building of a great Pacific 
fleet. In addition to all those arguments they had 
another, and perhaps the most powerful of all, in re- 
serve. " The Chinese," they said, " will bitterly resent 
our occupation of Port Arthur, and they will confound 
us with the Germans as the despoilers of their Empire. 
Our strength throughout the whole of the Chinese 
Empire depends upon our moral influence with the 
rulers at Pekin. Our position at Pekin is not weak- 
ened, but rather strengthened by the jealousy and sus- 
picion excited against Germany by the seizure of Kiao- 
Chau. Therefore let us severely abstain from any 
tampering with Chinese integrity. Let us emphasize 
our determination to maintain the integrity of the 
Chinese Empire against all comers. Let us push for- 
ward the construction of our railways, strengthen our 
commercial interests in China, and rely upon the good 



128 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

faith of England to save us from the dangers of see- 
ing Port Arthur and Talienwan pass under the con- 
trol of another European State." 

The balance of opinion at St. Petersburg was 
strongly in favor of this view. The Emperor for some 
time kept an open mind, with strong predispositions 
in favor of what may be regarded as the views of M. 
Witte as against those of Count Muravieff. This was 
natural for many reasons. He had travelled in the 
East. He had no sympathy whatever with the earth- 
hunger which seems to possess some people like a con- 
suming passion. He wished to leave the Chinese 
alone. He deprecated anything that would lead him 
into collision with England. He was even painfully 
anxious to avoid saddling his treasury with any fur- 
ther expenditure for armaments and munitions of war. 
All the cards seemed to be in favor of the victory of 
Witte and the discomfiture of Muravieff. Unfor- 
tunately the whole scene was changed, and changed 
not so much by the action of the British Government 
as by the steps taken on their own initiative by the 
British Admiral and the British Ambassador. The 
Admiral acted innocently, never dreaming what mo- 
mentous results would follow from the orders which 
he had given. It is, alas! impossible to say as much 
for the action of the Ambassador. 

As will be seen from what has been said of the argu- 
ments of the contending schools of Russian statesmen, 
it was essential for the success of the non-annexation- 
ists that England's good faith should be undisputed, 



THE CHINESE PUZZLE 129 

and that there should be no doubt whatever as to the 
honesty of Mr. Balfour's declaration in favor of Russia 
having an ice-free port, which could only be Talien- 
wan, to which Port Arthur was a mere corollary. On 
the other hand, the annexationists were keen to lay 
hold of any sign that would seem to prove the insin- 
cerity of the English Government, and to pounce upon 
anything that looked as if we were trying to wriggle 
out of Mr. Balfour's assurances. 

It was at this particular juncture that the Admiral 
commanding the British fleet on the Pacific stations, 
" being moved thereto of the devil," as the old legal 
phrase goes, bethought him that it would be well to 
order some of his ships to call at Port Arthur in the 
course of their cruise round the Chinese littoral. 
This was well within the authority of the Admiral in 
command, nor did he in the least imagine when the 
ships were ordered to take up their station for a time 
at Port Arthur that any political significance would 
be attached to their arrival in the port. So little im- 
portance did he attach to the matter that he made no 
report on the subject, and neither asked, sought, nor 
received permission from the Government at home. 
He sent the ships to Port Arthur as he had previously 
sent ships to Kiao-Chau, and as he would send them 
to any other port where he could find safe anchorage. 
Such, at least, is the positive declaration of the British 
Government, which we, of course, implicitly believe. 
It can easily be imagined with what feelings the news 
of the arrival of British warships at Port Arthur was 



130 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

received in St. Petersburg. The intelligence dis- 
mayed the non-annexationist and filled the annexa- 
tionists with joy. "We told you so!" the latter 
cried exultingly, and immediately proceeded first to 
press their suspicions on the mandarins at Pekin, and 
then at St. Petersburg to point triumphantly to 
the presence of the ships as proof positive of our bad 
faith. 

Our Ambassador, Sir Nicholas O'Conor, who was 
then, with the best intentions in the world, working 
hand-and-glove with the non-annexationist section, 
anxiously inquired as to why the ships were sent there, 
and, apparently as one result of his telegrams acquaint- 
ing the Government with the exaggerated importance 
attached to the presence of these vessels, he received 
and transmitted to the Russian Government assurances 
as to the non-political nature of the visit of the ships, 
which may be found in the Blue Book. Meantime, 
the ships having stayed their time, sailed away, but 
the mischief which they had done lived after them. 
Still, the removal of the ships gave fresh heart to the 
non-annexationists, who renewed the battle; and they 
might have won the day, had it not been for the fatal 
move of Sir Claude MacDonald, our Ambassador in 
Pekin — a move which no attempt has ever been made 
to reconcile with ordinary good faith. The only ex- 
cuse that is possible is almost inconceivable. It is 
difficult to imagine that the British Ambassador at 
Pekin was unaware of the fact that Mr. Balfour had 
publicly declared that the British Government en- 



TEE CEINESE PUZZLE 131 

tirely approved of Russia having an ice-free port in 
the Pacific. Yet, except on that hypothesis, it is dif- 
ficult to acquit the British Ambassador of an act of 
deliberate treachery infinitely worse than the worst 
that could be charged against Count Muravieff. 

For what did he do? First, no sooner did he find 
that the Chinese Government was in difficulty about 
the negotiation of a loan, than he went to the man- 
darins at Pekin and offered to secure them a British 
loan on various conditions, one of which was that 
Talienwan (which, he was careful to explain in his 
telegram home, was the only ice-free port) should be 
made into a treaty port. The mandarins at once ob- 
jected that Russia would never agree to this; but Sir 
Claude MacDonald insisted. " Why should the Rus- 
sians object? " he asked, " unless they had designs 
which, if they objected to his proposal, would then be 
unmasked? " But there was no need for unmasking 
their designs. Their designs, if one may call them 
so, were frankly avowed and had been publicly en- 
dorsed and approved by Mr. Balfour, the Leader of 
the House of Commons and First Lord of the Treas- 
ury. The Russians regarded their claim to have 
Talienwan as a matter that had passed beyond the 
pale of controversy. It had been virtually made over 
to them, whenever they wanted it, by Mr. Balfour on 
behalf of the British Government ; and yet, with this 
assurance fresh in their minds, they were suddenly 
confronted with the spectacle of the British Ambas- 
sador at Pekin endeavoring by the promise of a British 



132 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

loan to bribe the Chinese Government into cheating 
them out of the indispensable port. 

When this became known in St. Petersburg, the 
annexationists triumphed all along the line. Who 
could trust the English after that? Count Muravieff 
also, being anxious, it was said, to immortalize his 
family by bringing Russia to Port Arthur, as another 
Muravieff had brought Russia to the Amur, is said to 
have worked upon the Chinese by assurances more 
emphatic than accurate to induce them to request the 
Russians to occupy Port Arthur lest it should be 
seized by the English. The Chinese refused, but in 
such a way as to give Muravieff a colorable pretext for 
representing to the Emperor that the Chinese implored 
him to take Port Arthur. After this last coup the 
fate of Port Arthur was sealed. 

I have entered at some length into this question, be- 
cause it bears directly on the charge which is brought 
against Russia of having deceived us in the course of 
these negotiations. When the fate of Port Arthur 
was still in the balance, questions were asked at St. 
Petersburg as to the presence of Russian ships of war 
at the port, and we were assured that they were only 
there for winter quarters. This statement is con- 
stantly brought forward as a proof of Russian decep- 
tion. But the fact is that if we had not thrown the 
whole game into the hands of the annexationists, the 
ships would only have been there for winter quarters, 
and would have left Port Arthur in the spring. The 
rampant Jingoism of certain sections of our press and 



THE CHINESE PUZZLE 133 

the bad faith of Sir Claude MacDonald rendered it 
impossible for the non-annexationists to hold their 
ground, so that what would in all probability have 
been only a sojourn for the winter, was converted into 
a definite occupation. 

Then came the question whether or not Talienwan 
should be a free port or an open port. There was a 
misunderstanding on the English side, which is ad- 
mitted in the dispatches, owing to Lord Salisbury's 
having mistaken the clear and definite statement made 
by M. de Stael that the port would be "open " as equiv- 
alent to its being " free." For that, however, the Rus- 
sians are admittedly in no sense to blame. Before it 
was leased to the Russians, Talienwan was not open to 
trade. The immediate result of leasing it to the Rus- 
sians was to open it to trade, subject to the provisions 
of the Treaty of Tientsin, by which the import duty 
was fixed at a maximum of seven per cent. Having 
gained this point, if therewith our Ministers had been 
content, a great deal of trouble would have been 
avoided. But unfortunately, from excessive zeal Sir 
Nicholas O'Conor deemed it necessary to raise the fur- 
ther question as to whether or not Port Arthur should 
also be an open port. Now from the public declara- 
tions of Her Majesty's Ministers, Port Arthur cannot 
be made a commercial port. It is essentially a mili- 
tary and naval position, corresponding to the Spithead 
ports and the Isle of Wight; and satisfactory answers 
having been given as to Talienwan, which corresponds 
to Southampton, there was neither sense nor reason 



134 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

in declaring that Port Arthur should also be declared 
an open port. Unfortunately, however, instead of 
pointing this out, assurances were given of the readi- 
ness to make it open, which the Russians afterwards 
took back. Instead of justifying this taking back of 
their promise, which they could perfectly well have 
done on the ground that Port Arthur, according to 
Lord Salisbury himself, could not be made into a com- 
mercial port of any kind, Muravieff made statements 
which, if not intended to mislad, were, to say the least, 
very unfortunately phrased. From this misunder- 
standing, of which I have heard many explanations, 
none of which seem to me either conclusive or satis- 
factory, there sprang a popular belief that the Rus- 
sians had wilfully deceived us, although what con- 
ceivable advantage they could have derived from such 
deception has never been clearly pointed out. The 
disadvantage was obvious enough. The Ministerial 
papers, almost without an exception, fumed and 
foamed and published day after day attacks upon the 
Government to which at last Lord Salisbury yielded, 
and ordered the occupation of Wei-Hai-Wei. Thus 
the third step was taken towards the partition of the 
Chinese Empire. 

The advantage to England of the occupation of 
Wei-IIai-Wei still remains problematical. The dis- 
advantages are obvious. To Germany it has been no 
doubt a gain that we should have thrust ourselves into 
a position which makes us partners with them in the 
partition of Northern China, partners who, however, 



THE CHINESE PUZZLE 135 

are precluded by our own voluntary protestations from 
attempting to derive any commercial advantages from 
the position. The only defence that was made was 
that it was necessary to advertise to Japan and the 
other nations that we were not out of the running, and 
that if Germany and Russia seized Chinese territory, 
we also were willing and able to take a part in the same 
game. It is stated — I cannot say with what authority 
— that the balance of naval authority was distinctly 
against taking Wei-Hai-Wei, and up to the present 
fortunately there has been no expenditure to speak of 
in the way of fortifying or garrisoning the place of 
arms over which our flag flies. Wei-Hai-Wei remains, 
and it is sincerely to be hoped will long remain, a place 
d'armes, as worthless for Imperial purposes as that 
other place d'armes in the Mediterranean, the filching 
of which, under the cover of the Anglo-Turkish Con- 
vention, is an indelible blot upon the good faith of 
Great Britain. 

The irritation produced by these various seizures of 
Chinese territory can easily be imagined. The Rus- 
sians said little but did much — that is to say, they 
fortified and garrisoned Port Arthur, and produced a 
naval programme at the beginning of last year which, 
if carried out, would entail the expenditure of twenty- 
four millions sterling in six years in the building of 
a great Pacific fleet. Of this twenty-four millions, 
ten millions were allocated for the construction of ships 
in their own dockyards, and in France, Germany and 
the United States. The remaining fourteen millions 



136 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

sterling, which are also to be spent before the end of 
1905, have not yet been allocated, but it is part of 
the programme officially announced at the beginning 
of last year, which was prepared as the necessary and 
natural corollary of the occupation of Port Arthur. 

Throughout the whole of the discussions on the 
Chinese question, no exception can be taken to either 
the tone or the matter of the speeches of Lord Salis- 
bury and Mr. Balfour. ]STo such compliment, how- 
ever, can be paid to the utterances of Sir Michael 
Hicks-Beach and Mr. Chamberlain. It was Sir 
Michael Hicks-Beach who first spoke openly of main- 
taining our position, if necessary, by war. But his 
indiscretion was thrown into the shade by the outburst 
of Mr. Chamberlain, who in a famous, or infamous, 
speech virtually called Russia a devil with whom it 
was impossible to come to any understanding or to 
come to any agreement. This was the famous " long- 
spoon " speech, which had at least one good result. It 
revolted even those who most sympathized with the 
anti-Russian feeling, and brought down upon Mr. 
Chamberlain reproofs which were all the worse to bear 
because he knew them to be so well deserved. 

The popular conception of Mr. Chamberlain is erro- 
neous in many points, and in none so much as that 
which paints him as a man of strong convictions and 
of resolute purpose. Mr. Chamberlain in reality is 
a creature of impulse. He is a man of strong feelings, 
and when he feels strongly he speaks strongly. One 
of his colleagues, when explaining and apologizing 



THE CHINESE PUZZLE 137 

for tlic " long spoon " speech, maintained that it really 
was an outburst of offended affection. Mr. Chamber- 
lain, to do him justice, has always been a great advo- 
cate of a good understanding with Russia. At the 
time when Mr. Gladstone seemed to be heading full 
swim for war with Russia over the Penjdeh affair in 
1885, Mr. Chamberlain was almost, if not quite, alone 
in the Cabinet in maintaining that war was neither 
necessary nor expedient. " We are going to war all 
round the world on a pin's point," he is said to have 
remarked to Mr. Gladstone. ISTo one was better 
pleased than Mr. Chamberlain when the result proved 
that war was not only unnecessary but impossible, 
Germany and Austria having informed the Sultan 
that he was on no account to allow our fleet to pass the 
Dardanelles and the Bosphorus; and the Ameer of 
Afghanistan having informed Lord Dufferin at the 
same time that he would not on any account allow 
British troops to pass through Afghanistan to attack 
the Russians in Central Asia. When Mr. Chamberlain 
foreswore his allegiance to Mr. Gladstone and went 
over into the Tory camp, he carried with him not only 
his thrall, Mr. Jesse Collings, and the whole Chamber- 
lain clan, but he also carried among his impedimenta 
his belief that an understanding with the Russians 
was both possible and desirable. In Council he had 
always advocated the establishment of an understand- 
ing with Russia, and hence when the negotiations 
about Port Arthur came to their unfortunate ending, 
he went off in a tangent in the opposite direction, and 



188 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

in an outburst of temper declared that we would need 
a very long spoon if we were to sup with the Russians. 
It was only " pretty Fanny's way," and thoroughly in 
accordance with the methods and manners of the new 
diplomacy, of which he is the patentee and sole pos- 
sessor of author's rights. I suppose Mr. Chamberlain 
would allege in self-defence, first, that he never ade- 
quately realized the extent to which Sir Claude Mac- 
Donald's attempt to convert Talienwan into a treaty 
port was inevitably regarded by the Russians as a 
scandalous breach of good faith on our part. The 
significance of the fact that Talienwan was the only 
ice-free port in that region through which Russia could 
have access to the sea may have escaped him. He fur- 
ther has the characteristic John Bullish belief that 
when you get mad the best thing to do is to swear at 
large. It blows off steam and relieves internal pres- 
sure to give your adversary a piece of your mind. 
That may be all very well for the individual citizen; 
but Mr. Chamberlain should never have forgotten that 
he was a Minister of the Crown, and in that capacity 
was bound to reduce the exuberance of his natural 
disposition within the limits of diplomatic propriety. 

When matters were in this troublous state, a further 
difficulty arose concerning the railway from Pekin to 
Neuchang. The Russians, whatever faults they may 
have had, and whatever mistakes they may have made 
in the conduct of their diplomacy in the Far East, can 
certainly not be accused of any reticence, reserve, or 
dissimulation as to the objects of their policy. They 



THE CHINESE PUZZLE 139 

had, even before Port Arthur was taken, frankly 
avowed their objection to see any other European 
Power establish political influence in Manchuria. 
They had further made arrangements with the Chinese 
Government which precluded them from making any 
concessions giving political influence to any European 
Power within what they considered to be the sphere 
of their interest. The attempt made at Pekin in the 
interest of the concessionaires who are financed by the 
Shanghai Bank, to obtain a concession for a railway 
to iNeuchang, brought our Government face to face 
with the Russians. ISTo sooner was it announced that 
the concession was to be granted than the Russians 
objected, the Chinese recoiled, and there was another 
outburst on the part of the Russophobist Jingo party 
against the interference of the Russian Government 
with British enterprise. The Russians said little but 
stood firm. The concession was inconsistent with the 
agreement which the Chinese had previously con- 
cluded with the Russians, and it had to be cancelled. 
Thereupon there was great ululation in the Jingo 
camp, and Lord Salisbury was abused in all the moods 
and tenses for making another of the graceful con- 
cessions which it was declared had made British policy 
a by-word for weakness and imbecility. As a matter 
of fact, Lord Salisbury could not help himself, for the 
Chinese had merely promised us a concession under 
pressure, which was incompatible with the agreement 
into which they had previously entered with the Rus- 
sian Government. Finally, after a good deal of angry 



140 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

altercation, the Russian objection was sustained. Brit- 
ish money was to be used in the construction of the 
railway, but provision was taken to prevent the em- 
ployment of British capital being used as the lever for 
the establishment of a British imperium in imperio 
in Northern China. 

While the situation was in this strained state, mat- 
ters were made worse by various stories as to the con- 
cession of a railway running from Pekin southwards 
towards the Yang-tse-kiang valley which was financed 
by the Russo-Chinese Bank, and was held to be the 
mere stalking-horse for the extension of Russian polit- 
ical authority into a region which we had marked out 
for ourselves. 

I should have mentioned before that in the struggle 
between Russian and British diplomacy at Pekin, Eng- 
land had gained an extension of territory on the main- 
land opposite Hong Kong, and also had secured con- 
cessions for the opening of the Yang-tse-kiang valley 
to foreign vessels, which, in the opinion of those best 
competent to judge, counterbalanced a hundred-fold 
all the commercial advantages the Russians were likely 
to gain for twenty years to come in Manchuria. 

The British Government had also secured the still 
more important concession which went further towards 
creating an imperium in imperio in the Chinese Em- 
pire than all the other concessions put together. For 
a long time past the customs of the Chinese Empire 
have been under the control of Sir Robert Hart, who 
was Inspector-General of Customs. Sir Robert Hart's 



THE CHINESE PUZZLE 141 

appointment, however, was purely personal. His sta- 
tus last year was changed by the arrangement arrived 
at between Great Britain and China, which not only 
secured Sir Robert Hart's position, but established the 
principle that his successor must be an Englishman, as 
long as the trade of Great Britain in China exceeded 
that of any of her competitors. All these advantages, 
however, seemed to the excited assailants of Lord Salis- 
bury as mere dust in the balance compared with the 
occupation of Port Arthur by Russia and the pruning 
of the concession of the Neuchang railway. 

Hitherto it had been the established custom of the 
British Foreign Office not to lend the diplomatic sup- 
port of Great Britain to concession-hunters in China 
or elsewhere. It was Prince Bismarck who first be- 
gan the practice of using his Ambassadors as commer- 
cial travellers, and of employing the resources of Im- 
perial diplomacy in order to deflect orders to German 
firms. After struggling for some time against the 
clamor of the Ministerial press the Government gave 
way, and announced that they would support against 
Russia the Chinese Government's grant of any con- 
cession to a British subject. Mr. Gladstone called the 
Anglo-Turkish Treaty of 1878 " an insane conven- 
tion," but it was sanity itself compared with an under- 
taking which practically left it in the power of the 
Chinese Government to force us into a war with Rus- 
sia whenever it suited the policy of the mandarins to 
embroil her two great European neighbors. When 
things reached this oass. I thought it was about time 



142 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

that I recalled the suggestion made by the late Em- 
peror, and that I should proceed to Russia for the pur- 
pose of ascertaining, if possible, what the Russian 
( lovcrnment was really driving at, and whether there 
was any possibility of clearing up misunderstandings 
and of ascertaining the real drift of events in the Far 
East. 

Before I started, however, matters began to mend, 
and negotiations — the " long spoon " notwithstanding 
— were begun between the Russian and the British 
Governments, the basis of which was the delimitation 
of their respective spheres of interest. The under- 
standing suggested by the Russian Foreign Office, and 
favorably considered by Great Britain, was that Britain 
should regard the province of Manchuria as lying en- 
tirely within the Russian sphere of interest, subject to 
the understanding that Talienwan was to be an open 
port, that no preferential duties were to be charged, 
and that all goods were to be admitted subject only to 
the maximum duties laid down in the Treaty of Tien- 
tsin. By this arrangement the door of Talienwan 
would be opened as wide as that of any other treaty 
port in the world; British capital could be as fairly in- 
vested in Manchuria as in any other part of the Chinese 
Empire, but no concessions carrying political influence 
were to be sought by us in Manchuria. In return for 
this concession the Russians suggested that the valley 
of the Yang-tse-kiang should be regarded as the Brit- 
ish sphere of interest; and that they on their part would 
abstain from pushing for any concessions carrying 



TEE CHINESE PUZZLE US 

political influence in the Yang-tse-kiang valley. The 
valley of the Yellow River, which lies between Man- 
churia and the Yang-tse-kiang, was to be a happy 
hunting-ground for the concessionaires of both Em- 
pires — a kind of intermediate buffer State or sphere of 
interest, which would be common to both Empires. 
The matter did not go beyond diplomatic conversa- 
tions, in which the proposals put forward by the Rus- 
sians were not unfavorably considered by the British 
Government. 

Matters were in this state when, to the immense 
astonishment of every one, the Tsar's Rescript ap- 
peared, like a bolt from the blue sky. It was so 
utterly unexpected that, when one distinguished Rus- 
sian diplomatist was told by a friend what he had read 
in the papers, he put it down to the crass stupidity of 
his acquaintance, who, he thought, had probably 
mixed up some proposal for the disarmament of Cre- 
tan insurgents with a general proposal for an arrest of 
armaments. He was by no means alone in the amaze- 
ment which the Emperor's sudden initiative created 
throughout the ranks of diplomacy, both Russian and 
foreign. 

The publication of the Rescript gave at once a new 
objective to my tour. I had first merely intended to 
make a short trip to St. Petersburg, and to come back 
at once. But the Emperor by this time had gone to 
Livadia. It was the accident of his being in the 
Crimea that first suggested to me the idea of making 
the tour of Europe. I had never been further south 



H4 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

than Toula in Russia. I had never visited either the 
Balkan Peninsula or Austria-Hungary. I therefore 
decided to extend and enlarge my original design, and 
instead of merely going to see the Emperor, I pro- 
jected the tour round Europe which I subsequently 
carried out. Some of the first impressions of this run 
through the future Continental Commonwealth are 
embodied in the subsequent chapters. 



CHAPTER III 



HISPANIOLIZATION 



The most conspicuous event in the history of 1898 
was undoubtedly the sudden apparition of the United 
States on the field of world politics. It had long been 
foreseen as inevitable, but when the moment struck, 
the unanimity and enthusiasm with which the whole 
American nation rushed its Government into war 
startled the onlookers, especially those who had paid 
little attention to the development of American Im- 
perialism. It is tolerably safe to say that, outside 
Great Britain, there were very few persons who were 
in the least degree prepared for the outburst of 1898; 
and even in Great Britain there were many who were 
very much taken by surprise. The English, however, 
had one great advantage which enabled them to under- 
stand and appreciate the nature of the American move- 
ment. This was not so much community of language 
as the instinct of race. After all, what had happened 
in the United States was nothing but what had, time 
and again, happened in Great Britain. We had, in- 
deed, led the way in all such enterprises for more than 
a generation past. No Englishman who was in the 
least degree informed as to the nature of Spanish mis- 

145 



146 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

government in Cuba will deny that, had the policy of 
the United States been directed by the statesmen of 
Downing Street, and had the American people been 
subject to the impulses which sway the British public, 
the Spanish flag would long ago have disappeared 
from the American Continent. 

Another great advantage which enabled our people 
to understand the action of America was the close 
analogy which existed between the American move- 
ment for the liberation of Cuba and the great agita- 
tions which from time to time had swept over this 
country in favor of the liberation of Christian prov- 
inces from the Sultan. English policy has occasion- 
ally been revolutionized, and has frequently been 
deflected by a great humanitarian impulse beating pas- 
sionately in the hearts of the common people. On 
the Continent of Europe such experiences are ither 
unknown or are extremely rare. Hence, when the 
United States declared war against Spain, it was only 
in England that the sincerity, the genuineness of the 
popular feeling found general recognition. Every- 
where else it was believed that the humanitarian 
professions which figured so conspicuously in the dip- 
lomatic and public declarations of the American 
Government were mere pretexts put forward to mask 
a long meditated design upon the possessions of a 
neighbor. The English, who have been accustomed 
to similar misrepresentations on the part of Continen- 
tal nations, found themselves in lively sympathy with 
their American kinsfolk, not merely because of what 



HISPANIOLIZATION 147 

they were doing, but because of the way in which they 
were misjudged by their critics. 

But while this was true concerning the outbreak of 
the war, even the English were not a little amazed at 
the sudden development of American ambitions. It 
is true, no doubt, that the completeness and dramatic 
character of the American successes at Manila and at 
Santiago were sufficient to elate a less excitable people 
than the Americans. But that the American Repub- 
lic, which for a century had been constantly held up 
before our eyes as a type of the staid, serious, business- 
like commonwealth, should suddenly have passed 
under the sway of Imperial ambitions, would not have 
been credited in England any more than it would have 
been in the United States itself before Dewey de- 
stroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila. It is, no doubt, 
true that the motives which led the Americans to in- 
sist upon the cession of the Philippines were largely 
humanitarian, and sprang in great measure from a con- 
ception of Imperial duty which was far removed from 
anything that could be described as Jingoism. The 
sentiment of the obligations which they owed to the 
islanders, whose government they had destroyed; the 
sense of supreme power, carrying with it obligations 
which must be fulfilled — even though they exposed 
the Commonwealth to misrepresentation and imposed 
upon the United States a burden much more onerous 
than profitable — undoubtedly counted for much more 
than censorious critics are willing to admit. At the 
same time it was impossible to deny that below all the 



148 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

lofty motives which impelled many Americans to take 
up their cross and accept the responsibility of civiliz- 
ing the Philippines, there was a strong turbid flood of 
masterful ambition. The Americans had felt their 
strength for the first time beyond the seas. They had 
made their debut in the arena of world politics. They 
had gained immediate and universal recognition as a 
world Power — as they believed, the greatest of the 
world Powers. They had conquered ; why should they 
not annex? Annexation was the fashion of the hour. 
All the other Powers had established outposts on the 
Asiatic Continent. It was not for the United States 
to shrink appalled from assuming a burden which 
much weaker states had borne with pride for genera- 
tion after generation. The pride of victory, the flush 
of conquest, the determination to assert themselves in 
the world — in short, all the motives with which we are 
alas! only too familiar, asserted themselves imperi- 
ously across the Atlantic, and combined with much 
more exalted sentiments in impressing upon the Old 
World the sense of the sudden advent of a new com- 
petitor for empire, richer than any of those which had 
already engaged in the partitioning of the world, and 
which was likely to bring to the great international 
game a spirit of audacity, not to say of recklessness, 
far greater than their own. We are even now much 
too near such a great world-event adequately to realize 
its importance. 

It was not only the advent of a new and formi- 
dable factor which must henceforth be reckoned with 



HISPANIOLIZATION 149 

ill the world problem that startled and bewildered 
Europe. There came along with it a curious sense 
of the instability of things. The older nations felt 
very much as the inhabitants in a region which for 
the first time has been swayed by an earthquake. 
Down to the day when Dewey destroyed the Spanish 
fleet at Manila, nothing seemed so absolutely fixed and 
stable in a mutable world as the determination of the 
United States not to fly their flag on any territory but 
their own. The traditional policy of the United 
States, the declarations of their statesmen, the appar- 
ently unanimous conviction of the people, all com- 
bined to make the rest of the world believe that what- 
ever might happen within the American Continent, 
they were quite safe in calculating that, excepting be- 
tween the Pacific and the Atlantic, the United States 
need not be reckoned with. The day after the destruc- 
tion of the fleet at Manila the whole scene changed as 
if by magic. The traditional policy, the declarations 
of statesmen, nay more, even the convictions of the 
people themselves, seemed to be totally transformed. 
The mariners who landed upon the back of the kraken, 
and imagined that they were on terra firma, were not 
more astonished when the huge monster suddenly dived 
beneath the sea, than was mankind when the United 
States asserted their determination to keep what the 
victory of Dewey had placed within their grasp. 

Simultaneously with the blazing apparition of 
American Imperialism there was witnessed another 
phenomenon, which in its way was equally disquieting. 



150 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

Spain, down to the beginning of this year, had been 
considered, not indeed as a great Power, but as a state 
which was capable of holding its own within the lim- 
ited area of its influence. The reputation of Spanish 
statemen, it is true, was not very high, but it was be- 
lieved that they were at any rate sane — that at Madrid 
there were Ministers who realized their responsibility, 
and who would bring to the government of the country 
the same forethought and care that is displayed by or- 
dinary men in the ordinary affairs of life. The Span- 
ish fleet, for instance, was believed to be no inadequate 
opponent of the fleet of the United States. They had 
behind them a great tradition. The quality of the 
vessels was first class. Their armament was thought 
to be even superior to that of the American ships. In 
land forces they were overwhelmingly superior in 
number and equipment, in discipline and in experi- 
ence. The army in Cuba had been acclimatized by 
long campaigns waged against the insurgents. The 
almost universal calculation was that Spain at least 
could hold her own for a time, while in Cuba itself she 
would make a long and arduous resistance. 1898, 
however, showed that Spain had gone rotten at the 
head. They had the ships, but their armament was 
lacking. They had the sailors, but they were un- 
trained in gunnery, and lacked the necessary experi- 
ence in naval warfare. The advantages of material 
were useless, and when they were put to the test they 
went down like a row of ninepins before their 
assailants. 



HISPANIOLIZATION 151 

Far more serious, however, than the failure of the 
fleet was the evidence which the war afforded of the 
lack of any serious thought or any practical common 
sense on the part of the so-called statesmen of Madrid. 
Imbecility is hardly too strong a term to use to de- 
scribe the way in which the Spanish Government en- 
countered the reverses which rained upon them in two 
Continents. It was then discovered that Spain had 
not only ceased to be a Power among the nations, but 
that she was no longer capable of producing adminis- 
trators who possessed either the nerve, the conscience, 
or the morale necessary for the maintenance of the 
national credit or the defence of the national interests. 
There then came into use a word of which we are likely 
to hear a good deal more in the years that are to come. 
That term was " hispaniolization." A decaying state, 
when it reaches a certain point of what may be called 
national putrefaction, is said to " hispaniolized." It 
marks an advanced stage in national decay. 

Hispaniolization, indeed, is no new phenomenon, 
but we have never seen it exhibited on so great a scale 
in a nation which at one time had played the foremost 
role in the drama of history. In the previous year 
there had been afforded another example in a young 
state of the same lack of serious purpose, the same 
absence of common sense, the same reckless indiffer- 
ence to the most simple and elementary facts of 
government, which were subsequently displayed in 
Madrid. The levity, the absurdity, the fantastic dis- 
regard of the plainest duties which characterized the 



152 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

policy of Greece when she challenged war with Tur- 
key, afforded only too close a parallel to the conduct 
of Spain. In both countries were constitutional mon- 
archies. In both the concession of representative 
government had resulted in producing nothing more 
worthy of respect than a scramble of office-seekers for 
the spoils, and neither country in the hour of its mis- 
fortune showed any capacity to produce a strong and 
capable administrator. Hence ensued, when the mo- 
ment of trial came, a paralysis which brought both 
states to the verge of ruin. Greece was saved by the 
intervention of the Powers, which threw their shield 
over the prostrate kingdom. Spain found no friends 
in need, and had to consent reluctantly to the sacrifice 
of almost all its possessions over sea. Financial dis- 
aster accompanied military defeat, and nations every- 
where realized more vividly than ever before that 
states, like individuals, could go reeling down to the 
grave with exhausted vitality and a paralyzed brain. 

At the same time that this tremendous world-drama 
was being enacted in the presence of the whole world, 
two of the greatest statesmen who had long towered 
aloft as pillars in the international Commonwealth 
were removed by death. Mr. Gladstone was the first 
to go; but he had hardly been laid to rest in the Abbey 
before Germany had to lament the disappearance of 
the great statesman whose iron hand had rebuilt the 
fabric of German unity in the latter half of the nine- 
teenth century. The nations which had been gov- 
erned for nearly the lifetime of a generation bv old. 



HliSPANIOLIZATION 153 

experienced statesmen, found themselves in the hands 
of comparative tyros. The throne of Russia was occu- 
pied by an almost unknown young man. The desti- 
nies of Germany were in the hands of a monarch whose 
restless energy and feverish ambition offered the 
sharpest possible contrast to the traditional idea of 
the stolid, phlegmatic and matter-of-fact nation over 
which he ruled. In Austria-Hungary, the rivalry of 
the various nationalities which make up that com- 
posite empire-kingdom seemed to have escaped the con- 
trol of the Government. Between Austria-Hungary 
and chaos there existed but the barrier of a single life; 
nor was there either in Hungary or in Austria a single 
statesman of European reputation. France was torn 
by internal dissensions, the end of which no one could 
foresee. For a moment M. Hanotaux had seemed to 
display some capacity to give permanence and con- 
sistency to French foreign policy; but M. Hanotaux 
disappeared, and a succession of ephemeral Ministries 
once more showed that while the Third Republic pos- 
sessed an infinite capacity for producing politicians 
eager for portfolios, she showed no sign of any ability 
to produce a directing class or a statesman with genius 
for government. 

In England the situation, although apparently more 
stable, had many elements of anxiety, not to say of 
danger. Foremost among these must be placed the 
disappearance of the balance of the Constitution. 
Hitherto the government of the British Empire had 
always been conducted on the assumption that the 



154 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

party in power was confronted by an Opposition which 
could be relied upon to act as a check upon the Govern- 
ment, and which was prepared at any moment to take 
office and form an administration composed of trained 
statesmen with a well-defined political programme. 
But of late years that security has disappeared. Lord 
Salisbury was in power at the head of a large majority 
almost entirely free from the restraint and the control 
which previous administrations had found in the ex- 
istence of an Opposition. Whenever a Liberal Gov- 
ernment is in power it has always to reckon with the 
House of Lords, which is a permanently Conservative 
body. Lord Salisbury was equally supreme both in 
the House of Lords and in the House of Commons. 
Confronting him in the House of Commons there was 
only a disorganized and distracted remnant of a great 
historical party, which had neither a leader to follow 
nor a policy to recommend. As a natural and inevit- 
able result, Ministers, freed from the usual restraints 
of Governments and finding themselves confronted 
by no organized Opposition, gave free scope to their 
individual idiosyncrasies. Under the semblance of a 
homogeneous Cabinet we were confronted with the 
spectacle of a Prime Minister whose pacific tendency 
was more or less openly countered by the current of 
bellicose sentiment which found its leader in Mr. 
Chamberlain. In the House of Commons party disci- 
pline preserved the outward semblance of unity; but 
in the press, especially in the newspapers which were 
nominally Ministerialist, this hostile tendency found 



HISPANIOLIZATION 155 

vent in a series of unsparing criticisms which left little 
or nothing to be said by the recognized chiefs of the 
Liberal Opposition. 

The situation, indeed, was one which in some re- 
spects bore an ominous resemblance to that which 
existed when the Aberdeen Cabinet controlled the 
destinies of England in the middle of the century. 
Lord Aberdeen, although differing in many respects 
from Lord Salisbury, nevertheless resembled him in 
a strong predisposition against war and against policies 
which were likely to necessitate the adoption of a 
course of warlike adventure. Mr. Chamberlain was 
the Lord Palmerston of the situation. Both had the 
same dominant characteristics — a swaggering deter- 
mination to assert themselves without much regard 
to the susceptibilities of their neighbors, and an un- 
compromising readiness to adopt the last arguments 
of kings when other arguments failed. If we were to 
carry the parallel further we might find considerable 
analogy between the position of Mr. Balfour in 1898 
and that of Mr. Gladstone in 1854. Mr. Kinglake, 
in a well-known passage, has explained how it was that 
a Cabinet, whose Prime Minister was devoted to peace, 
and whose chief pillar of strength in the House of 
Commons was equally free from all imputation of 
Chauvinism, nevertheless drifted fatally into war. 
More than once in the course of the past year it seemed 
as if the parallel would hold true, even to the last 
bloody ultimate. Fortunately, so far, we have been 
spared, but no one who looks back over the history of 



156 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

the twelve months, and sees the alternate phases of 
bluster and " bunkum," of graceful concessions and 
prudent retreat which followed each other with almost 
the regularity of the black and white squares on a 
checker-board, can feel particularly proud of the ex- 
periment of governing without an Opposition. On 
the Opposition benches there was an utter and v.oful 
lack of either initiative or resolution. 

At the beginning of the year a great opportunity 
was offered to the Liberals of adopting a line which, 
as the result proved, would have commended itself 
to the country, and would have obviated most of the 
misfortunes which subsequently ensued. If they had 
definitely followed the plan laid down by Lord Rose- 
bery when he abandoned the leadership and insisted 
that the time had come to call "Halt! " in the extension 
of the responsibilities, territorial and otherwise, of 
Great Britain; and if they had steadily and resolutely 
supported Lord Salisbury in his efforts to maintain a 
rational and pacific policy in the Far East; much that 
is most to be regretted in the history of the year would 
not have been written. But the instinct of the Oppo- 
sition to oppose, even when it has neither an alterna- 
tive policy nor an alternative Cabinet to place before 
the country, was too strong for the adoption of a policy 
which would at once have been patriotic and prudent. 
The pacific section of the Ministry found themselves 
overwhelmed by the pitiless hail of snarling criticisms 
showered upon them by their own organs morning, 
noon and night. The young men of the party, wax- 



RISPAKIOLIZATIOX 157 

ing bold, and feeling that they could indulge with im- 
punity in the license of irresponsible criticism, took a 
delight in assailing their own side for want of energy 
in defending British interests, which, being inter- 
preted, meant going to war with Russia. 

It is hardly possible to conceive of a more fatuous 
course than that which was taken by Sir William Har- 
court, who, while professedly desiring to maintain 
peace, used the whole of his great forces of raillery 
and sarcasm in ridiculing the Government and in hold- 
ing them up to derision for their lack of vigor and the 
inconsistency of their policy. One of his speeches 
which dwells in the memory was one long invective, 
every sentence of which tended directly in favor of 
the party that was endeavoring to hound the Govern- 
ment into war; and then by way of salve to his con- 
science he wound up by expressing a great desire for 
a good understanding and friendly relations with 
Russia. 

A member of the Cabinet said to me on the eve of 
the Southport election, " We shall lose Southport and 
we shall lose all the by-elections because we won't go 
to war with Russia." I replied, " ISTot at all. You 
would lose your by-elections much worse if you did go 
to war with Russia. The fact is, you can govern this 
country either on a peace tack or on a Jingo tack; 
but you can't govern this country and win your by- 
elections if you are Jingo one day and all for peace 
the next." As Mr. Spender frequently remarked in 
the Westminster Gazette, it is absolutely impossible to 



158 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

steer the British lion when two men are on his back, 
one sticking his spurs roAvel-deep into his flanks, while 
the next moment his colleague is reining him in with 
curb and bit. 

During the whole of that trying time, when the 
issues of peace and war were hanging in the balance, 
and it seemed as if the peace section in the Cabinet 
would be overborne by the clamors of their own sup- 
porters, Lord Rosebery, who had flung up the Liberal 
leadership rather than assent to what he regarded as 
a dangerous drift towards war for the redress of the 
wrongs of the Armenians, said never a word, but pre- 
served a silence of the Sphinx on the rare occasions on 
which he was visible to his countrymen. At last, 
when things came to a head and the Government, after 
fumbling and floundering, felt that it must placate its 
supporters by seizing something somewhere, and Wei- 
Hai-Wei was occupied, the nation waited with anxiety 
for some words of wisdom from the men of light and 
leading who were responsible for the direction of the 
affairs of the Opposition. But Lord Rosebery was as 
dumb as a sheeted corpse, while the Liberal leaders in 
the House of Commons decided with only one dis- 
sentient that it would be impolitic for them to adopt 
the policy of a resolute opposition to such an extension 
of our imperial responsibilities. So the party which 
had been self-decapitated in order to prevent action 
in the interest of humanity in the near East, contented 
itself with the emission of barren and futile criticisms 
upon the seizure of a great stronghold in the China 



HISPANIOLIZATION 159 

seas. The clamor of concessionaires, the angry de- 
nunciations of men whose business had not prospered 
as much as they hoped it might have done in the China 
trade, found no strong and resolute voice upraised to 
rebuke the heedless selfishness of financial greed. All 
this, it must be confessed, has an ominous resemblance 
to the beginnings of hispaniolization in our own 
Empire. 

Amid all this paralysis of self-effacement by a de- 
moralized and disheartened Opposition, and the con- 
flicting counsels and eddying policies of a Cabinet, in 
which it seemed as if Mr. Chamberlain and Lord Salis- 
bury were striving for mastery as Jacob and Esau 
struggled together before birth, it was impossible not 
to be impressed by a phenomenon which boded ill for 
the peace of nations. That phenomenon was the 
growth of the influence of the daily press. It may 
sound paradoxical, but it is nevertheless true that side 
by side with this alarming development of the power 
of irresponsible journalism there has been as percept- 
ible a diminution of the influence of the Press as an 
arena for the grave discussion of public questions. 
The paradox is easily explicable when we reflect upon 
the dual nature of a newspaper. The editor of a news- 
paper is the showman of the universe. It is given to 
him to display before the eyes of mankind the vast 
moving panorama which is continually in progress 
among mankind. You put your penny or your half- 
penny into the slot, and you are permitted to survey 
mankind from China to Peru. The keeper of this 



160 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

journalistic slot-machine, as a condition of his exist- 
ence, must make his living photographs move as viv- 
idly, picturesquely and dramatically as possible before 
the eyes of the public whom he wishes to attract, other- 
wise they will go to somebody else's slot-machine, and 
he will be left penniless. Side by side with this func- 
tion of showman, the editor combines the task of a 
mentor, discussing, praising, condemning and judging 
the actions of the characters which he displays in vivid 
life upon his broadsheet. But men are but grown-up 
children at the best; and no one who has had any 
experience of the nursery can have forgotten the 
impatience with which youngsters resent the morals 
that all serious-minded writers used to consider 
necessary to round off their tales. So inveterate is 
the habit of skipping the moral that I well remember, 
when I brought out an edition of x^Esop's Fables in 
my " Books for the Bairns," I reversed the usual cus- 
tom, and condensed the moral into a headline as the 
only chance of its finding acceptance with the juvenile 
public. Editors are driven to act very much in the 
same manner. The showman gains more and more 
upon the moralist, and the influence of the editor is 
more felt in the headlines of his paper than in his 
leading articles. The " scare-heads," to give them 
the expressive name which they enjoy in the United 
States, have gained; the leading articles have lost. 
Hence the influence of the journalist which has devel- 
oped of late is not the influence of the writer of lead- 
ing articles, who at least is bound to state arguments 



HISPANIOLIZATION 161 

in a more or less rational and consecutive fashion; but 
it is the influence of journalism of the scare-head vari- 
ety, which employs all the resources of type for the 
purpose of emphasizing and deepening the sensation 
of the news of the day. 

It is easy to see how this change has come about. 
Twenty or thirty years ago the majority of our people 
did not read the daily newspapers, and those who did 
were more or less educated. Since the Education Act 
began to turn out millions of youths with sufficient 
education to read the newspapers, a new public was 
created unaccustomed to the serious discussion of polit- 
ical affairs, but quite willing to be interested in the 
endless sensations with which the progress of events is 
constantly supplying the reader of newspapers. They 
were willing to read the daily papers, but only on con- 
dition that the news was short and spicy, and served 
up in tit-bits with all the garnishing that effective sub- 
editing could give it. 

We see the ultimate outcome of this tendency in 
the Daily Mail, a journal established within the last 
two years by a man with a natural genius for journal- 
ism, with limitless resources and restless energy. The 
Daily Mail, a halfpenny morning paper, although the 
youngest of the London dailies, has far eclipsed all its 
older rivals in circulation. But its leading articles 
are but snippets, and its political comments are often 
little more than snap-shots. It owes its success to the 
ability, energy, and resources with which its editor 
has succeeded in making it the mirror in which you 



162 THE UNITED 8TATE8 OF EUROPE 

can see in miniature the reflection of everything that 
is going on in the world that is piquant, interesting, 
or sensational. It is a many-colored quilt of piquant 
paragraphs, all duly displayed with adequate scare- 
heads, and the whole served up with a snippety-snap 
smartness and up-to-dateness which abundantly ac- 
counts for its phenomenal success. A journal that 
has already achieved a circulation of half a mil- 
lion a day is a fact whose significance cannot be 
ignored as an index to the state of public feeling 
or as an influence in the direction of public af- 
fairs. The Daily Hail, in short, is a first-class half- 
penny show, which has counted for a good deal in the 
development of the impatient unrest of the London 
public to which Ministers are always more or less 
responsive. 

I give this prominence to the Daily Mail for an- 
other reason — because it so vividly illustrates the 
ascendency which the scare-head editor has over the 
responsible director of the responsible political opin- 
ions of the paper. There are few men in London who 
are so level-headed and so sane on the subject of China 
and our relations with Russia as the editor of the Daily 
Mail. Mr. Alfred Harmsworth is of the school of 
Cecil Rhodes; and Cecil Rhodes has never even had 
the mildest attack of Russophobia. No school in the 
Empire has looked more dispassionately and judicially 
upon the progress of Russia than the Rhodesians, and 
in this Mr. Harmsworth is a faithful disciple of his 
master. Although these may be the convictions of 



HI8PANI0LIZATI0N 163 

the editor, it unfortunately cannot be said that the 
Daily MaiVs influence during the whole of the agi- 
tated period was in favor of rationality or of the pur- 
suance of a reasonable and sympathetic course in the 
region where the interests of Russia and England were 
supposed to be at stake. It is more piquant, more in- 
teresting, and tends more to keep up the sensation and 
interest of the show to issue day by day a paper bris- 
tling with suggestions that the Russians were over- 
reaching us and that Lord Salisbury was being bested ; 
and so things went on until we had the Mail almost 
threatening the Government with disaster if it did not 
seize Wei-Hai-Wei or some other vantage point in 
China. 

Another example may be cited of latter-day journal- 
ism which in one respect is more apposite, but in an- 
other does not illustrate quite so clearly the conflicting 
influence of the editor and the writer of scare-heads. 
The New York Journal, which a few years ago came 
into the possession of Mr. W. R. Hearst, became last 
year in many ways the most notable specimen of the 
journalism which is now in the ascendant. If you 
wish to know the difference between America of thirty 
years ago and America of to-day, you only need to 
compare the New York Tribune with the New York 
Journal, and contrast Horace Greeley with "W. R. 
Hearst. The New York Journal is the supreme 
example of successful journalism achieved by what 
may be described as the persistent adoption of a policy 
of spasmodic sensation. Mr. Hearst is a man com- 



164 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

paratively young, a millionaire with great journalistic 
flaire, and without any well-defined political prin- 
ciples, who nevertheless was possessed by a vast ambi- 
tion. At first the ambition seems to have taken no 
other definite shape or form than a determination to 
beat the Neiv York World on its own ground. To 
this end he poured out money like water, and by a 
series of Napoleonic coups at last established himself 
in the premier position of American journalist. Dur- 
ing the war, when he had a fresh edition nearly every 
ten minutes, and filled up the intervals by painting 
the latest bulletins on enormous boardings in front of 
the office, the circulation is said to have reached 1,250,- 
000 per day, a circulation without previous parallel in 
the history of American journalism. 

A distinguished statesman speaking of the New 
York Journal and its rival the New York World, 
expressed with great vehemence his conviction that 
the " yellow journalism," as it is called, of New York 
was " the most potent engine ever devised by the devil 
for the demoralization of the democracy." Strong 
as this declaration may appear, it is feeble compared 
with the denunciations which are rained upon the 
Journal by the Americans of the soberer and saner 
variety, whom you find in diplomatic posts abroad or 
meet in society. So vehement and violent are the 
diatribes levelled against Mr. Hearst and the Journal 
that I have occasionally found myself in danger of in- 
curring the major excommunication because I have 
occasionally acceded to his request to contribute spe- 



HISPANIOLIZATION 165 

cial articles to his columns. In reality, the Journal 
is by no means the leprous rag which its enemies repre- 
sent it. It is a newspaper which appeals to the crowd. 
Not even the greatest of journalistic Barnums could 
attract a million readers to his show without largely 
pandering, if we may use so strong a word, to the 
groundlings. It would be high treason in America 
to use the phrase once familiar in English politics and 
to describe the newspaper public as a " swinish multi- 
tude; " but there is a greater element of truth in the 
phrase than sticklers for the dignity of human nature 
would always be disposed to admit. The public is not 
so much swinish, as it is preoccupied with its own af- 
fairs, and if its attention is to be attracted it needs to 
be stimulated, to be shocked as by a perpetual succes- 
sion of electric thrills. All newspapers recognize this 
more or less, but Mr. Hearst last year was the supreme 
practitioner of the art. To get up a sensation, to keep 
it going, and before it has time to be played out to get 
up another sensation, and yet another, in endless suc- 
cession — with that whole art and mystery of latter-day 
journalism he was familiar to his finger-tips. But it 
would be a great mistake to regard these showman arts 
by which the crowd is attracted to the fair as repre- 
senting the whole or even the greater part of the phe- 
nomenal position which Mr. Hearst attained. For 
some time the Journal swung to and fro, apparently 
without either chart, compass, or steering directions; 
but within the last year it aspired to be much more 
than the mere sounding-board of the " cackle of the 



166 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

bourg," or the journalistic cinematograph of the events 
of the world's history. 

More than any other man in the United States, Mr. 
Hearst was responsible for the war with Spain. As 
he constantly avowed in his leading columns, while 
other newspapers were content to try to chronicle his- 
tory, it was the boast of the Journal to make it; and 
he made it with a vengeance. "Whatever we may 
think as to the wisdom or unwisdom of the course 
which the Journal has advocated, no one can deny 
that from first to last it preached what may be called 
the expansionist doctrine with a vehemence, an energy, 
an ability, and a persistency which could not be ex- 
celled. Responsible American statesmen will tell you 
that they never read the Journal, that it is a paper 
that is never seen in any respectable house, and that 
it is a great mistake to pay any attention to what they 
call its " ravings." 

But to all this I have only to make the same reply 
that Prince Bismarck made to a British Ambassador, 
to whom he had complained about some articles in the 
Pall Mall Gazette. " The Pall Mall Gazette," said the 
Ambassador impatiently, " is in no sense a Ministerial 
organ." "No," said Bismarck, "perhaps not; but 
whatever the Pall Mall Gazette says to-day, Ministers 
do to-morrow." And it may safely be said that if 
any one wished to form a correct estimate of the prob- 
able drift of American policy during the whole of last 
year, he would have found a much safer guide in the 
leading columns of the Journal than in the avowed 



HISPANIOLIZATION 167 

intentions and genuine convictions of President 
McKinley and his Cabinet. 

Xor is it only in the English-speaking countries that 
we find the influence of the latter-day journalist exert- 
ing more and more a dominant influence in the direc- 
tion of the affairs of nations. There is only one other 
paper in the world which can challenge primacy, in 
point of view of circulation, with the New York 
Journal. That is the Petit Journal of France. The 
Petit Journal is a creation largely of the publishing 
genius of Marinoni. It counts its daily circulation by 
the million, and there is no nook or corner of France 
into which it does not penetrate. It has many good 
qualities, and, like both the Daily Mail and the New 
York Journal, it is conspicuously free from any ap- 
peal to the great goddess Lubricity, whose modern 
Paphos is Paris. But of all engines for exciting and 
intensifying national hatred and envenoming the feel- 
ings of class against class, it would be difficult to find 
anything worse than the Petit Journal. No accusa- 
tion against England is too absurd not to be welcomed 
in its columns, and no invective against the friends of 
Dreyfus can be too savage for the editorial taste. It 
goes forth day by day with its million voices into all 
the villages and hamlets of France, engendering 
hatred and stirring up strife. 

This perhaps is a natural and an inevitable result 
of the extension of the journalistic suffrage to great 
masses of the people to whom you can only appeal if 
you print in very large capitals, and whose attention 



168 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

you can only command by a perpetual prodding with 
a very sharp pen. The old readers, the minority, may 
still read their papers, but they are no longer in the 
exclusive possession of the field. Their judgment is 
overborne; their voice is silenced by the murmur 
which rises from the great crowd at the show, which 
when it is tickled laughs, and when it is provoked roars 
from a million throats. This, it may be said, is only 
democracy, but it is democracy articulate. It is a 
partial return under modern conditions to the ancient 
practice in which the affairs of a state were decided 
by the whole people assembled together in a mass meet- 
ing. The modern nation is little better than a huge 
mass meeting, in which the voice of the scare-head 
editor alone has stridency sufficient to carry to the 
verge of the crowd. His voice is never still. It 
sounds from a vantage like that of the muezzin's tower, 
high above the city'sdin, when it cries; but not like 
the simple Mahometan, "To prayers, to prayer-! 
There is no God but God, and Mahomet is the prophet 
of God," — rather it cries aloud to the barbaric in- 
stinct of self -aggrandisement, self-assertion, self-glori- 
fication. " There is no people so great as the Ameri- 
can people," cries the Journal from its million issues, 
" no people so great, so glorious, so good, so altogether 
fashioned in the image of God." And so in similar 
fashion our latter-day journalists instead of acting as 
mentors, accept the role of flatterers, and diligently 
fan the flames of national egotism and imperial ambi- 
tion. It is, perhaps, too much to expect a journalist 



HISPANIOLIZATION 169 

who depends for his existence upon the crowds which 
he can attract through his halfpenny peep-show, to 
don the mantle of a prophet and to risk stoning in the 
market-place for speaking stern but unpalatable truths 
in the ears of his countrymen; but the fact that the 
temptation to flatter the prejudices and minister to the 
passions of the crowd is almost irresistible increases 
rather than diminishes the danger of the position. 

This phenomenon is one of the most conspicuous 
and universally recognized perils which threaten the 
maintenance of peace. It is no longer in the cabinets 
of monarchs or in the closets of despots that we must 
seek for the greatest peril which threatens the tran- 
quillity of the world. The despot, especially if he be 
hereditary, is saddled with an ever-present sense of 
responsibility. He is trained for his task from his 
childhood, and he is chained to his throne by obliga- 
tions from which he cannot divest himself. But the 
irresponsible editor, who flings firebrands all day long 
amid the combustibles of national passion, lives only 
for the day, and has no restraint either of law or 
of custom placed upon his reckless incentives to 
war. 

I did not meet a single responsible man in the course 
of my tour through Europe, whether he might be jour- 
nalist or statesman, diplomatist or sovereign, who did 
not frankly admit that the unbridled license of the 
press, and the interest which it had in promoting situ- 
ations that create sensation, constituted the most 
alarming and serious danger against which it behoved 



170 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

statesmen to provide some harrier if the peace were to 
be maintained. 

A well-known journalist in Paris to whom I had 
made some such observation as this, exclaimed: "Noth- 
ing could be more true. There are men in Paris at 
this moment who, in order to sell ten more copies of 
their paper to-night, would not hesitate to make the 
whole planet swim with human blood." 

It is easier to point to the evil than to indicate the 
remedy, but one or two observations are forcing them- 
selves with increasing pressure upon the attention of 
responsible men. The liberty of the press is one of 
the most cherished palladia of human freedom. Eng- 
land is the home of such liberty, but in England the 
law is prompt to punish any attempt on the part of 
the press to express an opinion upon any question when 
once it has come before the attention of the courts. 
Is it too much to hope that when the United States of 
Europe comes more visibly into shape as a state organ- 
ism, a similar restraint may be laid upon newspapers 
in the discussion of international questions when they 
are lodged for settlement before an international 
tribunal ? 

In this connection I may be pardoned for recalling 
an incident in my own experience. Some years ago, 
Jabez Balfour, the founder of the Liberator Building 
Society, failed, and involved in his downfall the ruin 
of thousands of the most deserving and most unfor- 
tunate of British investors. Instead of waiting to 
answer before the tribunals of his country for the 



HISPANIOLIZATION 171 

gigantic system of embezzlement and fraud by which 
he had plundered the widow and orphan in a thousand 
homes, he bolted from the country and took refuge in 
the Argentine Republic. Much diplomatic represen- 
tation was necessary and no small expense was in- 
curred before his extradition was agreed to, and he 
was handed over to the officers of the law, who brought 
him back to answer for his crimes in the dock at New- 
gate. In chronicling the fact of his being brought 
back to justice in my monthly review of events, under 
the heading of " The Progress of the World," I re- 
marked that the said Balfour was a rare rogue, and 
added that we should soon hear no more of him. That 
he was a rare rogue no one could deny. That we did 
hear no more of him was a prophecy literally fulfilled, 
because within a very few weeks he was consigned to 
a felon's cell, where he still remains in durance vile. 
Nevertheless for making that perfectly obvious remark 
concerning a man who had set our laws at defiance 
and was being brought back by the strong hand of the 
law to undergo his trial on a criminal charge, I was 
haled up before Her Majesty's Judges, severely re- 
proved and fined £100 and costs in order to teach me 
the limits of the liberties of the press in commenting 
upon affairs which are still sub judice. 

Against the justice of that verdict, and the sound- 
ness of the principle upon which the law was enforced, 
not one protest was raised in the press, nor do I make 
any complaint on my own account. It was no doubt 
a personal hardship, but the principle was worth main- 



172 THE UNITED 8TATE8 OF EUROPE 

taining at the cost of such individual inconvenience. 
But if, instead of hazarding a passing observation as 
to a criminal not yet tried, who had virtually admitted 
his guilt by fleeing from the jurisdiction of the Courts, 
I had strained every resource of passion and of rhet- 
oric in order to inflame public opinion on a question 
involving peace or war which was being handled by 
the Foreign Offices of two countries — if I had suc- 
ceeded in rousing popular passion to such an extent 
that it was impossible for the still, small voice of rea- 
son to be heard, and if, as a result, I had succeeded in 
hounding my country into a terrible war, I should no 
doubt have been held answerable before the judgment- 
seat of the Almighty, but there exists no human power 
and no judicial authority on this planet that would 
have called me to account. 

The contrast between the excessive severity with 
which the law guards the impartiality and the serenity 
of the judicial bench in cases involving the liberty and 
property of private citizens, and the indifference which 
is displayed to passionate invectives avowedly directed 
against the dispassionate consideration of international 
disputes, can only be regarded as a recklessness too 
great to have been incurred deliberately by any sane 
people, and which, therefore, will sooner or later have 
to be corrected when the attention of mankind has 
been turned to this omission in the panoply of civili- 
zation. 



PART III 

THE NORTHWESTERN STATES 

CHAPTER I 

BELGIUM 

Before even I had landed on the Continent a catas- 
trophe that overwhelmed Cervera's fleet on the Cuban 
coast was vividly recalled to the mind by the associa- 
tions of the narrow seas through which the Ostend 
steamer ploughed its way. The very wind was still, 
the unquiet seas were smooth, and overhead the silent 
stars looked down from a cloudless sky. But along 
that low-lying coast, where glimmered here and there 
the sentinel lights, there swept three hundred years 
ago, in bloody confusion and smoking ruin, the wreck 
of the Armada of Spain. 

I had not been twelve hours in Brussels before I 
found myself in the Chapel Royal, attending the re- 
quiem mass for the hapless Empress of Austria. All 
the Diplomatic Corps attended in full dress, Protestant 
and Catholic, Christian and Moslem alike testifying 
in formal courtly fashion, as the solemn music wailed 
through the crowded church, the common sorrow of 

173 



174 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

the world for the Imperial victim. But even there 
the memory of the war obtruded. For among the 
throng of gorgeous uniforms two figures stood con- 
spicuous by the sombre plainness of their attire. 

The American Minister, of course, wore his usual 
plain clothes. But matching him, to the no small 
astonishment of the Diplomatic Corps, stood the Span- 
ish Minister in undress. Why, no one knew. Spain, 
we knew, had lost her colonies and her fleets, but she 
surely had a uniform left. 

Leaving the church, I strolled down to the most 
famous monument in the city, the famous square, 
sacred to the memory of Counts Egmont and Horn, 
the patriot victims of the Duke of Alva, the Weyler 
of his day. Everywhere in the Low Countries you 
stumble upon traces of the sanguinary flood-tide of 
Spanish conquest, of the heroic sacrifices by which 
these lands were redeemed for civilization and human- 
ity in the days bygone. Nowhere could I more fit- 
tingly begin my mission of inquiry as to what the Old 
World thought of the New America, than in the thriv- 
ing, industrious commonwealth which rose from the 
ashes of the Alva's vengeance. 

Belgium is not one of the Great Powers, but the 
little kingdom is a microcosm of Europe. Her inter- 
national position, her close proximity to and intimate 
relation with France and Germany, her traditional 
intimacy with England, the recent and astonishing 
development of her industrial enterprise in Russia, 
make her a vantage point from which the European 



BELGIUM 175 

movement of opinion can be studied more conven- 
iently and advantageously than almost any other land. 
But from the point of view of my American mission 
to ascertain what the Old World thinks of the latest 
new departure of the New World — that world which, 
ever since it was discovered by Columbus, has been 
an increasing source of astonishment to Europe — there 
was still another reason for making Belgium the start- 
ing point of a European tour of interrogation. The 
parallel between Belgium and the United States is 
curiously close. Both countries owe their political 
existence to a successful revolution. Although one is 
monarchical and the other Republican, both are alike 
blessed with a constitution which has its imperishable 
bases on the principles of the sovereignty of the people, 
the liberty of the press, and the liberty and equality 
of all religions. Both countries at their foundations 
abjured all ambition of foreign conquest. Each pro- 
fessed a resolute determination to cultivate its own 
garden without meddling with the lands beyond its 
borders. Both are industrious, prosperous, peaceful 
and contented, the envy of their neighbors and an 
example for the world. If the United States had no 
army, Belgium had no fleet. 

Nevertheless Belgium, or rather the ruler of Bel- 
gium, succumbed even sooner than the United States 
to the fascination of over-sea dominion. While 
Americans are still hesitating whether or not to make 
two bites of the Philippine cherry, Belgium has, 
within the last dozen years, built up for herself a 



17G THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

tropical Empire in Africa almost eighty times her own 
area. She is dreaming of concessions in China, she is 
making immense investments in Russia. Everywhere 
she is looking over the pale of her own little garden 
for fresh fields for the investment of her super- 
abundant capital and for the exercise of her exuberant 
energy. Belgium's experience, therefore, enables Bel- 
gians to form a sympathetic and intelligent judgment 
concerning the new departure in America. 

I spent some days in Brussels, during which I had 
an opportunity of forming a tolerably comprehensive 
conception of Belgian opinion on the subject. There 
is no feeling of alarm or antipathy in Belgium to 
America's expansion, either in the West Indies or in 
the Philippines. They criticise it impartially, feeling 
that it does not concern them. But they protest 
against any parallel being drawn between the found- 
ing of the Empire of the Congo and the acquisition of 
the Philippines. Belgium, the King protests emphatic- 
ally, is so small, so crowded a country — it has a popula- 
tion of 0,000,000 on the area of 11,300 square miles 
— that if he did not look out for fresh fields and pas- 
tures new his flock would ere long be compelled to eat 
each other. 

The King of the Belgians, who, if he had but a 
wider scope for the exercise of his abilities, might have 
achieved a foremost position in the history of our 
times, is the founder of the Congo State. His point 
of view is that it is the verv smallness of the Belgian 
kingdom which justifies the policy of expansion. As 



BELGIUM 177 

he wrote in 1890, when he made the will leaving the 
Congo to the Belgian Government — a gift not even 
yet accepted — 

I have never ceased calling the attention 1 of my fellow- 
countrymen to the necessity of loking torwards the countries 
over the sea. History teaches us that it is the moral and 
material interest of countries with a restricted territory to 
extend beyond their narrow frontiers. Greece founded on 
the Mediterranean opulent cities, the home of arts and civi- 
lization: Venice later on established her grandeur by the 
development of her maritime and commercial relations, no 
less than by her political success. The Netherlands possess 
in the Indies thirty million subjects who exchange their 
tropical products for those of the Mother Country. It is in 
serving the cause of humanity and progress that peoples 
of the second rank appear as useful members of the great 
family of nations. More than any other should an indus- 
trial and commercial nation like ours strive to secure out- 
lets for the products of all its workers — of those who work 
with their brain, with their capital, or with their hands. 
These patriotic preoccupations have dominated my life. It 
is they which led to the creation of the African enterprise. 
My labor has not proved sterile. A young and vast State, 
directed from Brussels, has pasifically taken its place in the 
world. 



" For Belgium," said a former Prime Minister, 
" expansion is an economic necessity. The fact that 
we have no fleet is sufficient to prove that it is not 
prompted by Imperial ambition. But with the United 
States it is different. Their immense resources in 
their own territory are barely scratched. If they 
found colonies as the result of conquest it is due to 
the lust of power. I do not blame the Government. 



178 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

They were powerless before the clamor of the crowd. 
None the less it seems to me an enormous mistake." 

It is quite true that the Belgians, as a nation or as a 
state, have never committed themselves to a policy of 
over-sea expansion. They are a cautious people. The 
Congo adventure is a speculation of the King's. The 
proposal to transfer the Congo State to Belgium has 
been vehemently and hitherto successfully resisted. 
For the last eight years the Belgian Parliament has 
devoted 400,000 dols. a year to subsidize the Congo 
administration, and it will continue to do so until 
1900, when the question of annexation will once more 
come up. It is almost certain that the decision will 
be again postponed. 

One cause for this reluctance to regard the Congo 
kingdom as part of the national estate is well worthy 
of American attention. 

" If the Americans," said an experienced observer, 
" wish to make a success of the Philippines, as the 
Belgians have made of the Congo, the first thing they 
have got to do is to discover a Leopold. They need 
not call him a king. Of course that is impossible and 
unnecessary. But unless they have a capable admin- 
istrator with a permanent tenure of office and a free 
hand they had better leave it alone. In the Congo 
State, the King of the Belgians is a greater autocrat 
than the Tsar in Russia. lie invented it, he financed 
it, he governs it. In every detail his will is supreme. 
He tells us just so much about its finances as he 
chooses. And, being a man of extraordinary ability, 



BELGIUM 179 

with a quite exceptional genius for finance, he has 
achieved a remarkable success. But there is hardly 
a man who knows anything about the Congo and its 
affairs who will not tell you that the attempt to govern 
that vast empire by the ever-shifting agency of party 
government, based on universal suffrage, would be 
foredoomed to failure." 

But the scruples of the Belgians are disappearing 
in the presence of the boom in Congo stocks. The 
ten millions sterling which are now invested in the 
Congo railway and Congo commercial companies 
stands to-day, according to the Stock Exchange quota- 
tions, at no less a sum than thirty millions. The 
revenues of the State, including the Belgian and royal 
subsidies of £120,000, almost equal the expenditure, 
which last year was a trifle under £600,000. The 
Congo, therefore, promises to turn out a paying con- 
cern, and if the promises are made good, the objections 
of the Belgians to become a colonial power will prob- 
ably wane and disappear. 

Another point on which opinion was practically 
unanimous was that it is the merest midsummer mad- 
ness to touch the Philippines at all unless the Ameri- 
cans take the whole archipelago. To take away 
Luzon, the very hub of the wheel, and then leave the 
rest of the spokes to Spain on the condition that she 
shall govern them more or less on American principles, 
was regarded as such unspeakable nonsense that it 
can only be criticized by an expressive shrug of the 
shoulders. 



180 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

Belgians are by no means indifferent to American 
expansion in two directions. They are keenly inter- 
ested in the question of the future government of the 
Philippines from the point of view of the Catholic 
Church. For Belgium for the last fourteen years has 
been governed by a succession of Catholic Ministries. 
The Liberals who attempted to establish secular edu- 
cation have been practically effaced. The Clericals 
are in power, confronted by a Socialist opposition; but 
the latter have no prospect of gaining office. 

I made it my duty to ascertain at first hand the 
views of the two men who, more than any others,repre- 
sent the feelings of the Catholics. Both were watch- 
ing with the keenest interest the development of the 
situation in the Far East. Both agreed in expressing 
an earnest hope that, whatever is done, no confiscating 
hand will be laid upon the property of the religious 
orders. One of them, the man who for years has been, 
while out of office, almost as potent as Mr. Croker is in 
New York, would not commit himself so far as to say 
that he disapproved of introducing religious liberty 
into the Philippines, but he evidently leant that way. 
" The question," he said, " is whether America intends 
to govern these new conquests in accordance with the 
wishes of the population, or whether she intends to 
exploit them for her ideas. It is not reasonable to say 
that, because Belgium grants perfect religious liberty 
to the heathen and missionaries of the Congo, there- 
fore she must approve of its introduction into the 
Philippines. There the unity of the faith exists. If 



BELGIUM 181 

you break it down large masses will, as we see it every- 
where, forsake the Catholic Church without joining 
any other. The result is immorality, which is deplor- 
able." 

The other, an experienced statesman, once a Prime 
Minister and now the President of the Chamber of 
Representatives, was much more liberal in his views. 
I was fortunate in meeting him immediately after his 
return from the Vatican, where he had been sum- 
moned for lengthy conversations with the Pope and 
the Cardinal Secretary of State, Rampolla. 

He expressed without hesitation his absolute convic- 
tion that religious liberty, as in Belgium and in the 
United States, was the best thing for the Philippines, 
and that he, for his part, would as a Catholic rejoice 
to see abolished the whole fabric of intolerance and 
sectarian monopoly. 

As he had enjoyed the privilege of long conversa- 
tions with the Pope and his advisers, I asked him 
point blank whether he thought the Holy See shared 
his liberal views. 

" You cannot expect the Pope," he said, " to make 
any declaration in that sense. He could not do so 
without repudiating doctrines affirmed by his prede- 
cessors. But he is a statesman; he is a practical man, 
and Pome is swarming with American clerics who 
have considerable influence at the Vatican. You 
must always distinguish between what the Pope may 
think with the front of his head and the arriere pensee, 
the back of it. Of course, as a matter of principle, 



182 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

no Pope can declare in favor of any refusal to enforce 
religious uniformity. But if you ask me what I really 
believe, I must tell you that if the Americans establish 
religious liberty in the Philippines the Pope mil find 
his compensations in the increased liberty which he 
will enjoy in dealing with the clergy without the inter- 
meddling of the civil power. Religious liberty, as in 
Belgium, would not in the long run be detrimental to 
Catholic interests." 

These questions are, however, more or less aca- 
demical, or at least they concern the few who, in the 
privacy of the closet of the confessional, meditate upon 
the affairs of this world from their ideal of the king- 
dom of Heaven. 

Far different was the keen interest excited by the 
pressure of American competition in the markets of 
the world. Opinions differ widely, but the best in- 
formed are the most alarmed. American competi- 
tion in food-stuffs has long since established itself as 
the most formidable factor with which the European 
agriculturist has to deal. They are now beginning 
to wake up to the fact that American competition is 
likely to be not less formidable in manufactured goods. 
American watches have long ago driven Swiss watches 
out of Belgium ; but as a good Belgian remarked, that 
concerns the Swiss, not the Belgians. But in the iron 
and steel trades the shadow of American competition 
looms dark on the horizon. 

The other day, in a tender for locomotives, the Bald- 
win Works at Philadelphia offered to put on the rails 



BELGIUM 183 

at Antwerp a locomotive at 500 dols. less than the 
lowest offer of the great firm of Cockerill. 

The general conviction that there will soon be a 
great slump in protection in America by no means 
lessens their uneasiness. Belgium, as befits a nation 
which exports manufactured goods averaging £10 per 
head of population, is all for free trade, and, like Mr. 
Gladstone, it is inclined to believe that American com- 
petition will not be seriously begun to be felt until the 
United States has thrown its markets open to the 
world. 

The brave Belgian is not disposed to despair, but 
those who know most about the resources and capa- 
bilities of America are the most alarmed. 

Prince Albert, who will one day sit on the Belgian 
throne, came back from his visit to the United States 
profoundly impressed by the manufacturing resources 
of America. He saw the bicycle factories at Hart- 
ford turning out seven hundred cycles a day; he visited 
the Baldwin works, where they build six locomotives 
a day; he visited Pullman's works, where they turn 
out a wagon every fourteen minutes; and he tells how 
Mr. Carnegie produces three-fifths of the whole steel 
output of England. He spent a week travelling in 
a private train with Mr. Hill, of St. Paul, and he came 
home overwhelmed by the spectacle of the mineral 
and mechanical resources of the Republic. 

" I saw," he said on his return, " in one place a 
mountain of ore in which the mineral extracted from 
the higher levels made its way by natural gravitation 



184 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

down the hill to meet at the furnace the coal mined 
at its foot, and almost without the intervention of the 
hand of man the process was complete. How can we 
compete with such a country as that? " 

" Alas ! " said Prince Albert to an American friend, 
"you will eat us all up, you Americans; you will eat 
us all up." 

The response of the Belgians to the Tsar's Rescript 
has been most enthusiastic. On this subject Belgium 
is practically unanimous. Everywhere the proposal 
has been hailed with enthusiasm- — even in quarters 
where it might have been scouted. The Catholics, 
from the highest to the lowest, are as one man in favor 
of the Tsar's philanthropic design. In this they arc 
in absolute accord with their head. Nothing could 
exceed the delight of the Holy Father on receiving 
the appeal of the Tsar in such a cause. For once there 
is a veritable reunion of Christendom: the official 
chiefs of the Greek Orthodox and of (he Roman 
Catholic Churches are now going hand in hand in a 
crusade of peace. There are special reasons why the 
Roman Catholics should welcome the Russian pro- 
posal. Even if the Conference did not go one step 
further than decreeing a stay of armaments for five 
years, it would deliver the Belgian people at once from 
a constantly pressing menace of increased armaments. 

For years past there has been a tug-of-war going on 
in Belgium between the King and his subjects on this 
very question. The Belgian standing army is only 
31,000 strong. It is raised by the old-fashioned 



BELGIUM 185 

method of conscription, and hitherto the Belgians 
have obstinately resented all the appeals of their King 
to introduce universal compulsory military service. 
The King is not a man of war. He is emphatically 
a man of peace. But he stands between two fires. 
France is always whispering into his right ear that 
unless he increases his army the Germans will invade 
France via Brussels; while the Germans whisper as 
earnestly into his left ear that unless he introduces 
universal military service Belgium will inevitably be- 
come the cockpit of the bloodiest war ever fought 
between civilized men. But the Belgian, who hates 
even the conscription, will not tolerate the idea of uni- 
versal service. It appeals no doubt to certain demo- 
cratic prejudices, and it appeals specially to the in- 
stinct of self-preservation. The Belgian Parliament, 
however, will have none of it, and the Catholic party, 
which created and sustains the Government, is irrec- 
oncilably opposed to the whole scheme. The feud 
is so fierce that no General can be found who will ac- 
cept office as Minister of War unless the army is en- 
larged according to the King's desire. The present 
Minister of War is a civilian who tacks on the control 
of the military machine to the more congenial labors 
of the Ministry of Ways and Communications. It is 
obvious what a godsend the Tsar's proposal has been 
to the governing body in Belgium. At a stroke the 
Tsar has delivered them from the one dread which has 
haunted them for years. If the Conference succeeds, 
and the status quo is stereotyped, the ideal of the 



186 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

Belgian Government is attained, for all talk of 
universal compulsory military service vanishes into 
limbo. 

The Socialists look the Russian gift horse in the 
mouth, and shake their heads when they find the prin- 
ciples on which they have so often insisted coun- 
tersigned by a Tsar. Some of their spokesmen have 
insisted upon the necessity of inaugurating the Millen- 
nium by establishing the universal reign of right 
against might, as a condition preliminary to any ac- 
ceptance of the disarmament proposal. 

But the popular feeling is unmistakable. Whether 
in the press or on the platform, in the palace of the 
King, or even in the camp of the army itself, there 
is only one opinion as to the sincerity of the Tsar and 
the duty of all civilized men to back him up. I spent 
a Monday afternoon in Liege, the great centre of the 
Belgian gun trade. There was there in session a 
Catholic Social Democratic Congress, attended by 
workmen and a host of Progressive priests from the 
country side. Although it was not in their regular 
agenda, a working man from Brussels insisted upon 
interpolating into their proceedings a hearty vote of 
appreciation and support to the Tsar for his proposal 
of a Conference of Disarmament. The motion, stud- 
ded with copious " whereases " and couched in the 
choicest Catholic phraseology, was carried with una- 
nimity and enthusiasm. 

Men like General Brialmont, who believe in their 
profession, are dubious about the possibility of achiev- 



BELGIUM 187 

ing any practical result. But the Belgians who do 
not wear epaulets are more sanguine. 

What ultimate outcome there may be no one can 
say. But T saw and heard enough in this microcosm 
of Europe to realize how grievous will be the disap- 
pointment, how terrible the disillusion if the splendid 
initiative of the Tsar is not energetically supported 
and carried to a successful conclusion. 



CHAPTER II 

FRANCE 

Last autumn the New World invaded the Old 
World, and in Paris the Hotel Continental was the 
headquarters of the Army of Invasion. It was a 
pacific invasion, no doubt, but the invaders were bent, 
if not on conquest and annexation, at least upon appro- 
priation and extension of borders. 

The struggle that went on between the French 
authorities and the United States Commissioners of 
the Exposition of 1900 brought forcibly home to the 
European the great question of the future. It is a 
miniature reproduction on a small scale of the conflict 
of forces which looms ever more gigantic before the 
eyes of mankind. 

"Room, room, room there for the New World! " 
cried Mr. Commissioner-General Peck. The Ameri- 
can must have room to spread himself and his wares 
at the World's Fair with which Paris will salute the 
new century, and the allocation of space in the Expo- 
sition grounds is far too small. The amiable French 
Ministers expostulate with polite shoulder shrug. 
" 'Tis impossible. What would our friends the Ameri- 
cans have us do? Germany and Great Britain are 

188 



FRANCE 189 

also imperiously clamoring for more ground space. 
We have already allotted the United States all we can 
spare. It is impossible, quite impossible." 

"Impossible!" thunders the Commissioner-Gen- 
eral; '"don't use to me that idiot of a word! Your 
space is small, I admit — only 336 acres as against 750 
acres at Chicago. But our needs are great. Room, 
make room for the growing giant of the Western 
World!" 

What can be done? The 336 acres cannot be 
stretched like elastic. All the space is appropriated. 
If Uncle Sam were to have more room, he could only 
have it at someone else's expense. Perhaps a scrap 
of space can be secured from a concessionnaire — here 
and there a bit can be squeezed from some South 
American Republic. But if Mr. Commissioner- 
General Peck and his staff were to attain the object- 
on which they had set their hearts, " somebody's got 
to git." 

The Americans were quite remorseless, ruthless, 
relentless in their demands. Chicago, in the person 
of Mr. Peck, and JNTew York, in the person of Mr. 
Woodward, backed by President McKinley and the 
whole of the United States, were determined that who- 
ever got left in the scramble for space it should not 
be Uncle Sam. They were hustling round at a great 
rate, negotiating, blarneying, bullying, buying, push- 
ing, until the Old World felt that it was being crowded 
on its own ground, perhaps even crowded out of its 
own ground by the Western conqueror. 



190 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

What went on in the Exposition grounds is going 
on on land and sea all round this planet. The shrink- 
age of the world has suddenly brought the nations face 
to face with each other. In the markets, in the colo- 
nies, and on the high seas the Old World is beginning 
to realize that perhaps there may no longer be enough 
to go round, that somebody is going to get left, and 
that that somebody is not going to be the New World. 
The conviction is coming home more slowly to the 
Frenchmen than to the Belgians, but they are learning 
it all the same. 

The result is an immediate increase of the deference 
paid to the United States by the French. Nothing 
succeeds like success ; and the difference in the attitude 
of the French to the Americans since Manila and 
Santiago is more marvellous than edifying. French- 
men of all classes, who twelve months ago sneered at 
the " dollar-hunting Yankee " as their forefathers 
scoffed at " the nation of shopkeepers " across the 
Channel, are running over each other in a helter- 
skelter race, vying with each other as to which can 
first fall on Uncle Sam's neck and embrace him. The 
way the Fourth of July was celebrated in Paris last 
year, as compared with its predecessors, was an object- 
lesson in the worship of the rising sun. If by any 
possibility any space could be discovered any way in 
the Exhibition of 1900 it was of course to be made 
over to the sister Republic, rather than to the German 
or to the Briton. Was not the Commissioner-General 
ready to erect a statue of Lafayette in the grounds — if 



FRANCE 191 

only he could get the space on which to set it up? The 
Minister of Commerce and the Minister of Foreign Af- 
fairs vied with each other in paying exceptional com- 
pliments to the Commissioners of the United States. 
Nay, it was even hinted that in 1809 American goods 
would be admitted to France under the minimum 
tariff, reciprocal concession being of course anticipated 
on the other side. 

The war was a revelation to the average Frenchman. 
When Dewey destroyed the Spanish fleet at Manila 
the scales began to fall from their eyes, and they " saw 
men as trees walking." When Cervera's fleet shared 
the same fate off Santiago, they realized that a new 
naval power had been born into the world, inheriting 
from the Destinies, as one of them put it, the good 
fortune that has always attended the English on the 
seas. Early in the war a report that the American 
fleet had been destroyed and Admiral Sampson killed 
threw the Parisian populace into a paroxysm of de- 
light. In those days no one disguised his sympathies 
with Spain. But nowadays they all agree to forget 
all that, and they are already convinced that there 
were never such friends of the Americans as the 
French, and never have been since the world began. 

All this is very pleasant for Americans in Paris, 
and it contributed to facilitate the work of the Peaeft 
Commissioners. There was no trace of disposition 
in official quarters to make any difficulties in settling 
the terms of peace. If the United States were to 
insist upon annexing every scrap of territory pos- 



192 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

sessed by Spain in the West Indies and the Far East, 
France would not interfere. The only demur made 
to the Imperial expansion of the United States comes 
from experienced observers like M. de Pressense, of 
the Temps, who regret the new departure, not because 
it affects France, but because it endangers the Ameri- 
can Republic. The French are at present exhibiting 
to the world some of the deplorable results of domi- 
nant militarism. They sigh when they see the New 
World gliding down the inclined plane which leads 
to Csesarism. They declare that the annexation of 
the Antilles and of the Philippines will necessitate 
the creation of a large standing army, the enrolment 
of a corps of functionaries, a departure from all the 
traditions of the Republic, and a total transformation 
of the letter and spirit of the American Constitution. 
In France, as in Britain, it is the men who know most 
of the United States— such men as Mr. Bryce and M. 
de Pressense — who are most alarmed as to the conse- 
quences of the new departure of the New World. 

When I was in Paris I wrote to the Associated 
Press: — 

I see that there appears still to be some question as to 
whether the European Powers ever actually proposed to 
intervene on behalf of Spain. The story was that they had 
decided to do so, and were only stopped by the blunt intima- 
tion from Lord Salisbury that if they ever attempted any 
such thing the British fleet would be placed under the orders 
of Mr. McKinley. It is a very pretty tale, and Lord Salis- 
bury might have said something of the kind if the other 
Powers had been mad enough to propose any such thing. 
Possibly some influential Briton did say something of the 



FRANCE 193 

kind when talk of intervention was in the air. But I have 
the highest official authority, both British and French, for 
stating that there was never any proposal brought forward 
by M. Hanotaux for European intervention against the 
United States, and that therefore no occasion arose for the 
exercise of the friendly offices of England. I regret having 
to destroy the legend, but magna est Veritas, and however 
delighted John Bull might have been to have lent a friendly 
hand to Uncle Sam if the Continental Powers had tried to 
interfere, he never had the chance. And for this reason. 
The European Powers, and France most of all, had too much 
sense. 

The origin of this story I discovered two months 
later when I visited Vienna. The legend had, after 
all, an indestructible basis of truth. 

Men of the world, men of experience, men of affairs 
- — above all, men who are deeply versed in the tor- 
tuous wiles of diplomacy — agree in expecting nothing 
from the Conference of Disarmament, and in fearing 
much. If the hard-pressed toilers of the world are 
to obtain any appreciable relief from the crushing load 
of M ilitarism, they will have to extend to the generous 
initiative of the Tsar a much more hearty reception 
than it is receiving from the men in office. The 
Democracy may help the Autocracy to achieve this 
boon for the human race. It will certainly not reach 
them at the hands of the Bureaucracy. 

Everywhere the Governments have answered the 
Muravieff Rescript with the customary courtesy that 
is always extended to anything that is said by the 
master of many legions, but, with one or two excep- 
tions, of responsive enthusiasm there has been none. 



194 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

Every one admits the sincerity of the Tsar, every one 
professes to admire his idealism and his philanthropy. 
But when all that is said and done, there is the most 
astonishing consensus of opinion that " it is not busi- 
ness." " Everything," they say with a shrug of the 
shoulders, " will go on exactly the same as before. 
There is only one Circular the more." 

So speak everywhere the cynical and very much 
disillusioned diplomatists. Diplomacy, it must be 
admitted, is not usually a forcing-bed for moral enthu- 
siasms. Ambassadors and Ministers who for the last 
thirty years have been perpetually face to face with 
the omnipresent activity of Bismarck may be pardoned 
for thinking twice, and even thrice, before they expect 
any good thing to come from the Nazareth of Imperial 
Chancelleries. Men who for the last half-dozen years 
have been familiarized with the ineptitude of the 
European Concert can hardly be expected to have 
many illusions left as to the possibility of bringing in 
the Kingdom of Heaven by any sort of international 
compact. It is only in the hearts of the common 
people, and among the masses where, far from the 
coulisses of diplomacy and the intrigues of Courts, 
men still cherish generous enthusiasms and an un- 
shaken faith in the great ideals of Peace, Justice and 
Progress, that the Tsar's proposal elicits any hearty 
response. " After all," said a young countryman, 
after a long discussion with a friend, " the Millennium 
is bound to come some day, and who can say whether 
it may not come this way as well as any other! " " The 



FRANCE 195 

Millennium is bound to come some day " — there is the 
keynote of the situation. From those who believe 
that, who cling to it as the great hope of the world, as 
the eternal pole star of the progress of mankind, the 
Conference on Disarmament receives a welcome the 
heartiness of which is only weakened by the haunting 
fear that it may be too good to be true. 

The full significance of the Tsar's initiative has, 
however, as yet been but dimly perceived, even by 
those who have welcomed it most heartily. Alto- 
gether apart from its proposals, or the subject of them, 
it carries written in every line of it the glad tidings of 
great joy that the winter of the period of old age is 
over and gone, and that once more mankind is facing 
the glad, joyous spring-time of a new century, under 
the leadership of those whose hearts are still fresh with 
the divine inspiration of youth. The old century is 
dying — let it die. Dr. Busch's " Secret Pages of Bis- 
marck's History " furnishes us at once with its epitaph 
and its condemnation. But lo! the sky glows in the 
East with the first promise of the splendor of the com- 
ing day. In the Imperial Rescript, however Utopian 
it may be, we have the first great challenge which the 
new age has flung at the feet of the most gigantic evil 
of our time. Here, at least, is something of the faith, 
the courage, and the magnificent audacity of youth. 
In the task of high emprise to which Nicholas II. sum- 
mons the nations of the world he may fail. It is not 
in mortals to command success. But it is better to 
have tried and failed than never to have tried at all. 



196 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

Hence, the more we think of it, the more just, the 
more true, appears the pregnant dictum of Mr. Morley. 
The Tsar's appeal is a touchstone of the peoples. " It 
will show us what we are and where we stand." 

It is natural that in France, and most of all in Paris, 
the doubting spirit which denies should be paramount. 
It is a hundred years since France used up the enthu- 
siasm of the Revolution in lighting the camp fires of 
the Napoleonic armies. Since then, although there 
has ever been a remnant who have preserved the sacred 
fire, " the men who swing France," whether under 
monarchs, Empire or Republic, have not exactly been 
French-speaking Quixotes. So far, indeed, have mod- 
ern Frenchmen gone in the other direction that I well 
remember, ten years ago, hearing one, now recognized 
as one of the most influential diplomatists, laughing to 
scorn the notion that there was even enough idealism 
left in France to make the war of revenge popular 
with the people. " There are only two men in 
France," he said in his bitter, sarcastic fashion, " who 
ever think of such an ideal thing as the fate of Alsace- 
Lorraine, and one of them is a woman." He referred, 
of course to the soldier-poet, Paul Deroulede, who has 
just been threatening M. Clemenceau with the guillo- 
tine, and Madame Adam, of the Nouvelle Revue. The 
worship of material comfort has succeeded all other 
ideals with most Frenchmen. Hence the Tsar's ap- 
peal falls upon ears stuffed as with cotton wool, and 
awakens slight response in hearts which resound all 
day long with the Babel of the Bourse. There is no 






FRANCE 197 

longer a Victor Hugo worthily to respond in the name 
of France to the initiative of the Tsar. 

The faithful few who are true to the great ideals 
of the Revolution, and the still smaller remnant who 
worship in secret at the shrine of the Prince of Peace, 
are overborne in the roar and rush of politicians and 
financiers. They find it more than they can do even 
to keep the scales of justice free from the sword of 
Brennus at home. They have no energy left to com- 
bat militarism abroad. The army itself, which is tra- 
ditionally supposed to be the cradle of all that is most 
exalted in heroic sentiment, can hardly be expected to 
wax very enthusiastic in support of a Peace Confer- 
ence. But there is another reason for the coolness of 
Paris towards the Conference. The French felt hurt 
that they had not been consulted by their ally before 
he issued the Rescript. They anticipated nothing in 
the world so little as such a proposal from such a quar- 
ter. Not disarmament, but more armaments, was 
their idea of what the Tsar desired. To oblige him 
they had even allowed French shipbuilders to give 
priority to the construction of Russian warships over 
those of France, to the production of which it had re- 
peatedly been declared all the shipbuilding resources 
of the nation would be exclusively devoted. The Re- 
script, therefore, simply took away their breath. They 
felt themselves, in more senses than one, " up a tree." 
They did not know where they were or what the Tsar 
was driving at. They thought he was spoiling for a 
fight, and lo! he issued an encyclical to the world at 



198 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

large, proclaiming the supreme importance of Peace! 
Behind all that first natural sensation of surprise 
there was another which went much deeper. The pro- 
posal to attend a Conference to discuss disarmament 
seemed to suggest that there was no longer a purpose 
for keeping up such gigantic military establishments. 
In other words, it appeared to imply that Europe had 
at last settled down in a state of normal equilibrium, 
and that everybody was practically content with the 
existing frontiers. That was, in effect to ask all the 
nations of the world to enter upon a pact of peace, the 
practical result of which would be that each and all 
of them would countersign and guarantee the Treaty 
of Frankfort. That treaty, indeed, would, in such a 
case, become the very charter and basis of the system 
which the Conference was to inaugurate. Farewell, 
then, to all hope of the Revanche; farewell for ever 
to Alsace and Lorraine! To bid such farewells may 
be obeyed if it be a decree of the Destinies, against 
which it is vain to repine and impotent to rebel. But 
to be suddenly summoned by your own friend and 
partner, apropos de rine, to say those farewells at a 
moment's notice — that, indeed, was more than French 
human nature could bear. Hence, after the publica- 
tion of the Rescript, a profound and miserable chill 
came over French sentiment towards their Russian 
ally. 

That mood existed, but it has passed. Count Mura- 
vieff had no difficulty in explaining that the Tsar was 
bound, in taking such initiative, to consult no other 



FRANCE 199 

Power, for the twofold reason that if he had consulted 
any one it would have compromised the Power he took 
into his confidence and have offended the other Powers 
who were not consulted. It was equally easy to ex- 
plain that while the Rescript might initiate a policy 
that hereafter might have immense consequences, it 
did not even suggest any such chimerical a step as the 
immediate disbandment, or even the immediate reduc- 
tion, of armaments. What was suggested was merely 
to cry halt in the race to ruin, and to discuss arrange- 
ments for arresting the continuous increase of expen- 
diture on armies and navies. If France objected, of 
course nothing could be done. The absolute inde- 
pendence of each Power was intact. But there were 
good reasons why France should not object. She has 
already reached the ultimate limit of her resources in 
men. She could not increase the annual contingent 
of recruits, for the simple but sufficient reason that 
French mothers no longer bear enough boys to furnish 
any more food for powder. Germany has still a vast 
reservoir of surplus manhood to draw upon. To 
stereotype the status quo would therefore be at least 
as great a gain to France in this respect as it could be 
to Germany by its indirect and apparent consecration 
of the Treaty of Frankfort. 

There were still other reasons which have con- 
tributed not a little to assuage the irritation felt in 
France at the Tsar's proposal. It was obvious that the 
first condition sine qua non of the meeting of the Con- 
ference was that the Powers represented, in agreeing 






200 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

to discuss the financial, military, and economical prob- 
lem mooted by the Tsar, did so without prejudice to 
all the political and territorial questions on which they 
differed. At one time, it is conceivable, a Tsar might 
have refused to enter into a Conference with France, 
lest it might appear to imply that he recognized the 
principle of Republicanism. Now not even the great- 
est stickler for the Divine right of Kings feels that he 
is false- to his convictions or consecrates the principle 
of the Revolution by meeting the representatives of 
the Republic, or even of entering into an alliance with 
a Republican Government. As it is with political 
questions, so it is with those relating to frontiers. 
They are as much out of the purview of the Confer- 
ence as questions of dynasties or of the rival principles 
of Monarchy and Democracy. The Conference will 
no more discuss the question of Alsace-Lorraine than 
it will discuss transubstantiation or the Rights of Man. 
But that is not all. For the Tsar has at hand a 
valuable and effective reply to the French complaint. 
The proposed Conference may postpone the immediate 
outbreak of a war of revenge for the revindication of 
the lost provinces, but it certainly does not do so more 
decisively than the French had done already by their 
great exhibition of 1900. That Exhibition is itself 
a kind of Peace Conference. When France invited 
Germany to exhibit her goods in the great show of 
the new century, she acquiesced in the status quo. 
Of course, she did not guarantee Germany the un- 
interrupted possession forever of her lost provinces. 



FRANCE 201 

Neither will she do so by accepting the Tsar's invita- 
tion. But she did give Germany the very best and 
most substantial security against a sudden French at- 
tack that any one could desire. These and other con- 
siderations have had their weight, and the momentary 
irritation against their Russian ally has already abated. 

The question as to whether the French people are 
longing for revenge and the revindication of their lost 
provinces is one on which the most widely diverse 
opinions are expressed. There is, however, substan- 
tial agreement among men of all shades of opinion 
that while France vigilantly maintains all her reserves 
and is resolved to take advantage of all the opportuni- 
ties which fortune may send her to regain her old 
provinces, she will never of her own motion or on her 
own initiative make war on Germany. A leading 
French statesman with whom I was discussing this 
question expressed in the very strongest terms his con- 
viction that no French Ministry will ever take the initi- 
ative in attacking Germany. " The risk would be too 
great, the sacrifices too immense. If Germany were 
involved in war elsewhere — ah, then, that would be 
another matter. But as long as Germany is at peace 
we shall not lift a finger to dispossess her." This helps 
to enable us to understand what a powerful security 
for peace the ineradicable yearning for the lost prov- 
inces has become in Europe to-day. 

A shrewd and experienced observer in Paris, on the 
other hand, told me that the popular feeling in favor of 
war was stronger now than it had ever been since 1870. 



202 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

The lessons of that terrible year have been forgotten. 
Paris is now in the hands of young men to whom the 
bombardment of Paris is only a matter of history and 
of tradition. Bismarck is gone. All the great Gen- 
erals who conquered France are dead. The French 
army was never stronger or better equipped than now. 
If the French saw their chance, they would not hesi- 
tate for a moment. If, for instance, the Russian Em- 
peror but held up his little finger ! 

But the Russian Emperor is holding his little finger 
down. There is another side to this alleged eagerness 
of France for war. It is the French of the Parisian 
boulevards that talk so lightly of so dire a catastrophe. 
France of the provinces — laborious, thrifty, cautious 
France — is of another opinion. A brilliant and dis- 
tinguished Frenchman — diplomatist, journalist, and 
patriot — assured me that the French peasant was very 
far from sharing the views of the boulevards. " If 
you were to go to-day," he said, " to the average 
French peasant, and tell him that the circumstances 
were so propitious that he could certainly reconquer 
Alsace-Lorraine by an expenditure of only 10,000 
men and £10,000,000, he would reply unhesitatingly, 
' No; I will not spend either the men or the money.' ' 
It may be so. But the worst of it is that the war is 
made before the peasant has an opportunity of having 
his say. It is not his to decide. It is only his to pay, 
to suffer, and to die. 

The question of the Peace Conference I found ex- 
cited little attention in Paris excepting on account of 



FRANCE 203 

the bearing which it might have on the Franco-Rus- 
sian Alliance. When that alliance was formed, those 
who did not know the Tsar imagined that it was a 
menace to the peace of Europe. Those who knew the 
Tsar knew otherwise. The object of Alexander III. 
in thus restoring the equilibrium of Europe and in 
satisfying the wounded amour propre of France was 
the natural culmination of the policy which won for 
him the title of the Peace Keeper of the Continent. 
In his eyes France isolated, France nervous, France 
desperate, was a constant menace to the peace of the 
world. At any moment she might make a plunge, 
by which she would hurl not only herself but all other 
nations into the hell of a general war. To prevent 
this it was necessary to offer her inducements sufficient 
to lead her to acquiesce in the status quo. There were 
two perils of war before Europe, both threatened by 
France. She had never accepted either the German 
possession of Alsace-Lorraine or the British occupation 
of Egypt. To attempt to reestablish her position 
either in M etz or in Cairo meant war. To minimize 
the risk of any such peace-shattering policy, Alexander 
III., without asking for any express disclaimer by his 
ally of hostile designs directed either against Germany 
or Britain, virtually secured the practical acceptance 
of the status quo by offering France an alliance which 
was guaranteed to fall to pieces if she undertook an 
aggressive war. Russia flung over the French Repub- 
lic the immense segis of her alliance, delivering France 
from all dread of attack from without, and restoring 



204 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

her at once to the position in Europe which she had 
lost in 1870. But all these advantages were forfeited 
if France drew the sword against the existing order, 
the status quo de facto on the Rhine and the Nile. 
Hence the Franco-Russian Alliance became, as it was 
intended it should become, a solid security for Euro- 
pean peace, and therefore, little as the French liked it, 
a virtual consecration of the Treaty of Frankfort. It 
was acclaimed, no doubt, by the Chauvinists of the 
boulevards as if it were the first step to the Revanche. 
It was exactly the opposite. But Baron Mohrenheim 
appears to have fooled the self -deluded Frenchmen to 
the top of their bent, while the Tsar, conscious that he 
had made the limitations of the alliance absolutely 
clear to the rulers of the Republic, felt under no obli- 
gation to make public declarations which might have 
annulled the whole object of his policy of peace. The 
Tsar knew also that although the boulevards of Paris 
might revel in the delirium of anticipated war, the 
French nation, pacific and industrious, hailed with im- 
mense relief an alliance which delivered it at once 
from all risk of foreign attack, or from the still greater 
peril of such a headlong rush to ruin as that which cul- 
minated on the battlefield of Sedan. 

France is preoccupied with the Dreyfus case. And 
the Dreyfus case is militarism come to judgment, mili- 
tarism made manifest before the world. The tree is 
known by its fruits, and the impeachment of militar- 
ism on economic grounds contained in the Muravieff 
circular is supplemented and made complete by the 



FRANCE 200 

revelation of the outcome of militarism in the moral 
field. " Militarism," says the Tsar, " empties the 
pockets of the nations." And France, responding 
across the Continent, as deep answers unto deep, 
answers, " And destroys their souls! " 

France, preoccupied, absorbed, possessed by the 
Dreyfus case, is the drunken helot of militarism to- 
day. She is as one bewitched, the prey of some foul 
obsessing demon, which takes a perverse delight in 
compelling her to wallow in all manner of defilements, 
from which " ideal France, the deathless, the divine/' 
would have recoiled with angry scorn. It is the Nem- 
esis of the system against which the Tsar has taken 
the field. France never had a more numerous or bet- 
ter equipped army than she possesses at present. But 
France never was weaker, more timorous, more under 
the terror of those nightmares which disturb the sleep 
of nations. It is not an exaggeration to say that the 
net result up to date of all the sacrifices which France 
has made over her armaments is to make her a prey 
to panic to an extent almost inconceivable to any one 
outside Paris. You ask in amazement : " Why all this 
tremendous hubbub over the revision of a sentence 
admittedly illegal, defended by evidence admittedly 
forged? " and the opponents of revision whisper with 
white lips that revision would inevitably bring about 
war! To avoid the risk of so terrible an alternative, 
better let a thousand innocent men perish in the 
Devil's Isle! Thus it appears that France, despite all 
her armaments — nav, is it not because of them? — has 



206 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

become so coward of heart and craven of spirit that 
she dare not even do justice to one of her own officers 
for fear of the foreigner! Such abject poltroonery 
would disgrace the pettiest of states without a gun 
in its arsenal or a fort on its frontiers. Bat to this pass 
has come to-day this distraught Republic. 

The delirium will pass. Revision is already virtu- 
ally secured, and the light is already beginning to 
break through the dense darkness in which France 
has lain so long. But for the present the country is 
still in the throes of a fever, which springs as directly 
from the atmosphere of the barrack-room as ague re- 
sults from the malaria of the marsh. Nations create 
armies that they may be strong and independent, able 
to do justice within their own frontier, none daring to 
make them afraid. But France, having sacrificed 
everything to the creation of her army, has been afraid 
to do justice because of her army. The army, no 
longer a means to an end, having become an end in 
itself, thus tends to defeat the very aim and object of 
its being. The nation, or at least such portions of the 
nation as find articulate expression in the press, has 
been in a very ague fit of fear. It cowered before its 
own shadow. It trembled at the thought of the wrath 
of the foreigner. It shrieked in panic dread at the 
mere suggestion that even officers of the General Staff 
should be compelled to obey the laws. There is no 
crime which its more demented spokesmen do not com- 
mit, either in imagination or in fact. They glorify 
forgery, applaud suicide, and openly exult in the pros- 



FRANCE 207 

pective massacre of thousands of their fellow-country- 
men. Everything that is base, everything that is dis- 
honorable, everything that is cowardly, everything 
that is false, abject and criminal forms the constant 
meditation of Frenchmen to-day. Whichever side 
they belong to, these are the things they impute to 
each other; and if they are the party in power, these 
are the things they employ without hesitation in their 
panic-stricken warfare against a nightmare. To such 
a pass has militarism dominant brought our once noble 
France — France of the Revolution, France of Jeanne 
d'Arc. 

It is easy to see the direct bearing of this upon the 
proposal of the Tsar. In the Middle Ages the knights 
progressively increased the thickness of their armor 
until the fighting-man became a mere iron-cased 
mummy. He had not sufficient strength to move be- 
neath his defences. In France we see the same phe- 
nomenon in the moral field. Her moral vitality is no 
longer sufficient to move under the superincumbent 
mass of her armaments. The old ideas, so distinct- 
ively French, of Chivalry, Liberty, Justice, Law — all 
the sublime ideals which made France for centuries 
the knight-errant of humanity — appear to have per- 
ished beneath the weight of her immense military sys- 
tem. The amour propre of the army, the prestige of 
a staff, have superseded the nobler ideals of national 
life. Matters are much worse now than in the Middle 
Ages. For the iron and steel cuirasses of the over- 
loaded knights were at least inert matter. But the 



208 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

armature beneath which the nation is perishing to-day 
has a horrible vitality of its own. It is, as it were, 
alive, and believes that the body exists for it, and that 
brain, heart, conscience, and the ideal, which are col- 
lectively the soul of the nation, is a minus quantity 
compared with the prestige, the authority, and the con- 
venience of the army. They, if not the ultimate, 
must at least be very near the ultimate, stage in the 
ye] f -destructive evolution of modern militarism. No- 
where in Europe could the Tsar find so terrible an 
object-lesson of the results of the baneful system upon 
which he is making war. France is a puissant ally, 
indeed, in the great argument for disarmament. 

The danger spot in Europe is, no doubt, Alsace- 
Lorraine. But the beneficent Power who maketh 
even the wrath of man to praise Him seems to be em- 
ploying this Dreyfus delirium of panic and crime to 
reduce the acuteness of that danger. England long 
ago lost the moral allegiance of the Irish, the majority 
of whom are far more American than English. The 
I )reyfus business is probably the most direct means by 
which France could have alienated the moral alle- 
giance of the Alsatian people. That which the Treaty 
of Frankfort failed to effect the Dreyfus scandal is 
fast accomplishing. The people of Alsace see with 
amazement and indignation the denial of justice to 
Alsatians. Albert Dreyfus in the He du Diable is an 
Alsatian. So is Colonel Picquart. It is enough to 
bear an Alsatian name to be hounded down as a Ger- 
man. To be a Protestant is almost as heinous a crime 



FRANCE 209 

as to be a Jew. The honest Alsatians do not under- 
stand all this. Their patrie, to whose fortunes they 
have clung with a touching fidelity, was a different 
France from this. So they are ruthlessly being driven 
from their allegiance, and every day they are more 
and more strongly tempted to become more reconciled 
to the German. 

It was of no use discussing in Paris the details of 
the Conference on Disarmament. No one spares the 
subject a thought. That is not the way the Franco- 
Russian Alliance works. His French ally is helping 
the Tsar in a much more effective fashion. For this 
Dreyfus business has pretty effectively resulted in the 
practical disarmament of France. Never since the 
Commune stood at bay behind the ramparts of Paris 
has France been so paralyzed by internal divisions. 
As long as the Dreyfuss business lasts, France is a 
cipher in Europe. Whenever for a moment the saner 
France emerges from the Malebolgic pool of passion, 
suspicion, hatred and savagery beneath which it is sub- 
merged, there always comes, as a flood tide, a revived 
interest in the affaire Dreyfus. What a turbid tide 
it is, reeking from the cloaca maxima of the world, 
bearing along upon its turbid waves the bloody corpse 
of the suicide Henry, which tosses about amid the 
wreck of much higher reputations, the disjecta mem- 
bra of the General Staff. It is a mournful spectacle. 
But who can deny that it makes for general peace? 

There is, of course, a possibility that the very mad- 
ness of the hour may lead to some sudden outbreak. 



210 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

As Count Arnim wrote in 1871 : " The French cannot 
be judged by the same standard as other nations. 
They have no sense of proportion, and attach impor- 
tance to matters that in reality have no significance. 
In a madhouse the merest trifles may lead to a revolt, 
and even if it be suppressed, it may first cost the lives 
of many honest people." There is a danger here, no 
doubt. But, as Bismarck wrote about the same time: 
" Two peoples dwell in France — the French and the 
Parisians. The former loves peace. The latter writes 
the newspapers, and seeks to pick a quarrel which 
the other then has to fight out. Both, however, 
should clearly remember how near the German army 
is at Chateau Thierry." The German army is no 
longer at Chateau Thierry. But the solid argument 
of force is quite as irresistible to-day as it was in 1871, 
perhaps even more so. And now there is added to that 
ultima ratio regum the fact that the Tsar, the ally and 
the friend of France, has summoned all nations to a 
Parliament of Peace. 



CHAPTER III 



GERMANY 



In a bright apartment overlooking Friedrich Wil- 
helm Strasse I sat pleading the other day for the Tsar's 
proposals. I was addressing myself to the gracious 
lady of the household, who, as she sat with her fifteen 
months old boy nestling in her arms, seemed a living 
personification of the Madonna and Child, uniting the 
glory of motherhood with the infinite promise of 
youth. She was no unworthy symbol of Europe. In 
her veins ran the mingled strain of noble blood of 
divers nations, and the face glowed with the noble 
enthusiasm of the political and social ideals to which 
she has dedicated her life. The curly-headed boy, 
coyly looking upon the stranger from the stronghold 
of his mother's arms, might have been the original of 
Raphael's Divine Child. As I talked of the need of 
the nations for release from the intolerable burden of 
militarism, she sighed. 

" Indeed, indeed, it is true. But will it come from 
such a quarter? His ideas in the Rescript are alto- 
gether our ideas. As Bebel said the other day, ' The 
Tsar is now our comrade and ally.' But we do not 
trust Russia." 

211 



212 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

" Do not look a gift horse in the mouth," I replied, 
" is a very good proverb. And great good once came 
out of Nazareth. But if these are your ideas, why 
not support the ideas even when they are put forward 
by the Tsar? " 

" These are our ideas indeed. No Social Democrat 
nor any section of the working population of Germany 
but would welcome with open arms any practical pro- 
posal to deliver the people from the corvee of mili- 
tarismus, which is so terrible a burden upon -" 

Here we were suddenly interrupted. The chubby 
cherub had climbed down from his mother's lap, and 
was foraging about for his picture-book. He found 
it, and turning over the pages, suddenly shouted with 
infantile glee, ignoring our talk — 

"'Daten! 'Daten! " 

The little fellow was standing erect, with flashing 
eye. No longer was he the Divine Child of Bethle- 
hem, but rather an infant Hercules, so stout, so stal- 
wart did he seem. And again he shouted imperi- 
ously — 

"'Daten! 'Daten!" 

" What does the little chap want? " I asked. 

" Ach," said his mother, looking down with pride 
upon her child, " it has always been so. I suppose it 
is in his blood. My father, you know, was a general. 
From the first moment he could observe anything it 
was the same. Always 'Daten, 'Daten ! Soldaten he 
means. Soldiers. No picture pleases him so much 
as that of soldiers. Always a soldier passing by fas- 



GERMANY 213 

cinates him. Thou little rogue," she said, " there is 
nothing like soldaten for thee, is it not so? " 

And I felt as she spoke that from the childish lips 
the Word of the Situation had come. All the ele- 
ments of the problem were there. I was speaking up 
for the Tsar's proposal. She was replying as Europe 
has replied, and in the midst of our talk of peace and 
our invectives against militarism, the child, the herr 
of the future, interrupts with the cry, " 'Daten ! 
'Daten"! " Alas, it may now be that once more from 
the mouth of the babe and suckling there has fallen the 
winged word of truth. 

When in Paris I asked Max Nordau if he believed 
there was any possible chance of evoking a genuine, 
widespread, passionate protest from the European 
masses against the burden of militarism, now for the 
first time challenged in the name of humanity in the 
name of the Tsar. " No," he replied undesitatingly, 
" not at all." " Why," I asked; " do they not groan 
under the burden? " He answered, " I know inti- 
mately the South German peasant. Ask any of them 
if they wish for war. ' Gott bewahre ! ' they will 
reply, ' there is nothing that we hate more.' But 
then if you again ask, ' Then you do not love the uni- 
form? ' they will say, ' Oh, that is another matter. 
We love the uniform and are proud to wear it. To 
protest against war — that is possible; to protest against 
the uniform, no, that would not succeed.' ' 

From which it would seem that the love of soldaten 
is not confined to the grandsons of generals. It is a 



214 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

widespread if not a universal fascination. This is not 
due to any desire to fight. Much of it, indeed, is due 
to a desire to avoid fighting. The corve of military 
service, the excessive burden of military expenditure 
are borne, if not cheerfully, then, at least, stolidly, as 
a necessary premium to ensure them against war. It 
is a kind of enchantment, as of some malevolent wiz- 
ardry, by which peoples, whose only desire is to remain 
at peace, are persuaded that the only protection against 
war is to arm themselves to the teeth. 

I spoke on the subject with the leader of the Free 
Trade party, who alike as deputy and journalist is free 
from all suspicions of militarism. He expressed in 
the strongest terms his conviction that no popular 
demand existed for a reduction of armaments in Ger- 
many. " Our people," he said, " have grown used to 
their military panoply. They do not feel its pressure 
as you might think they would. It is part and parcel 
of their national existence. They can hardly conceive 
life without military service, without the uniform. 
The best proof of this is that on every occasion when 
the question of an increase of armaments has been 
put to the people at a general election they have always 
voted in favor of the increase. Take last election. 
There existed, no doubt, a strong feeling against the 
increase of the fleet, but when the election was held 
any party that had opposed the fleet programme would 
have been swept away." 

" Your eminent deputy forgets," replied a leading 
Social Democrat, to whom I had repeated these obser- 



GERMANY 215 

vations, " that the Social Democrats have always op- 
posed the increase of armaments, and that every gen- 
eral election has seen an increase of their total poll." 
What he says is true possibly of the lower middle 
class, of the trading class, of the higher class. But 
of the masses of the population it is not true. The 
men upon whom the blood tax falls, the artisan, the 
laborer, the peasant, by them militarism is detested. 
I wish you could attend our Conference at Stuttgart, 
mingle with the delegates, speak with those who are 
of the people, and judge for yourself what the mil- 
lions of workers think of armaments. As for the in- 
crease of the fleet, that was voted on under the clever 
management of the Kaiser, who used the Kiao-Chau 
incident to overpower the opposition. But no one 
would welcome more than the German masses any 
diminution in the weight which crushes them to-day." 
There is truth in both these opinions. ISTo doubt 
the Social Democrats have made continuous protest 
against armaments, but their members are themselves 
not without pride at having served in the army, and 
anything more distant from the Quaker, or Stundist, 
or Tolstoian view of military things than that of the 
German Social Democrat it would be difficult to im- 
agine. Ever since 1808 this German nation has been 
passed through the military mill. The habit of mili- 
tary service has become a universal family tradition. 
Their fathers and their grandfathers before them wore 
the uniform. Their sons and their grandsons after 
them they expect will wear it. The uniform, in fact, 



216 TEE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

has become a second skin ; even the suggestion of peel- 
ing it off is almost unthinkable. And as for peace, 
the Kaiser but expressed the universal conviction of 
his subjects when he said that the best security for 
peace was the sharp sword of the German army. 

This may be admitted, and still there may be ample 
grounds for welcoming the Congress, and for hoping 
that at that international parliament, some short 
simple measure may be agreed upon that might here- 
after come to be regarded by the historian as the line 
dividing the watershed of the old era and the new. 
All notion of any diminution of the effective strength 
of the armed forces of the world must be dismissed at 
once as at present absolutely out of the question. Of 
disarmament in the sense of even so much as one single 
soldier in the armed camp which we call the Continent 
disarming himself, laying down his rifle, and tramping 
off home, — that is not even to be thought of. To pro- 
pose to send that one soldier home might precipitate 
the one catastrophe the thought of which is the night- 
mare of Europe. But it is possible that the first step 
towards better things may be taken at the Conference 
in the shape, say, at first, of a proposal to limit the 
expenditure on armies and navies for the next five 
years to their present maximum, and afterwards, of a 
suggestion for the reduction of the term of military 
service. The former would be operative at once, and 
even if it were in some cases evaded, the mere fact that 
such an international agreement had been arrived at 
would powerfully strengthen the opposition which in 



GERMAN? 217 

every country would be made to any further addition 
to the naval and military budget. As for the latter, 
it would be for the time being a mere pious aspiration. 
But it is in the line of a reduction of the period during 
which men remain with the colors rather than by any 
reduction of the numbers called up that any progress 
is likely to be made. 

There is no country in Europe where the Tsar's pro- 
posal will be supported with more apparent heartiness 
than in Germany. The Kaiser welcomed it with ef- 
fusion — and them increased his army by 26,000 men. 
The press, with the curious exception of the Vorwarts 
the Social Democratic organ, and the Preussische 
Jahrbucher, the organ of the Conservative Dr. Del- 
briiek, praised it with one accord. " Such a philan- 
thropic young ruler, such noble aspirations," and so 
forth. But after having delivered themselves of the 
conventional compliments that are necessary when 
the master of many millions proposes anything, the 
diplomatists and the journalists shrugged their shoul- 
ders, and with astonishing unanimity declared that 
" nothing would come of it." And, truly, nothing 
can come of it if it is left to them. For these cynical 
sceptics would addle even the egg of a phoenix if it 
were left to their care. 

Germany supports the proposal from considerations 
of German interest. It would not do to offend the 
Tsar by criticizing harshly a benevolent proposal that 
will come to nothing; and then, again, if by a miracle 
it did come to anything, it could only improve the 



218 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

security of Germany by strengthening the guarantees 
for European peace. From a military point of view 
Germany never felt herself more absolutely secure. 
For them there is no more any question of Alsace-Lor- 
raine. That is vorbei. The Treaty of Frankfort has 
taken its place among the most stable and unques- 
tioned bases of the international law of Europe. Any- 
thing, therefore, that gives more stability to the status 
quo strengthens Germany, and increases the com- 
posure with which she can contemplate perils on her 
western frontier. The French General Staff appears 
to the Germans to have gone to pieces completely in 
the confusion over Dreyfus, and M. Deroulede and his 
patriots appear for the moment to be the most effective 
allies Germany could desire in keeping guard over 
Strasburg and Metz. 

So far, therefore, Germany can be relied upon to 
support the Tsar, but except in one direction there has 
been no sign as yet visible of any desire to give effect- 
ive expression to popular sympathy with his object. 
The solitary exception is significant. The Woman's 
League for International Disarmament which exists 
in Bavaria is endeavoring to bring about in all the 
capitals of Europe a simultaneous demonstration by 
the women of the Continent in favor of the Tsar's pro- 
posal. How the matter will be arranged it is as yet 
too early to say, or what measure of success may attend 
it. But if the International Council of Women were 
to desire an opportunity to justify its existence it could 
hardly desire a better opening than the present. No 



GERMANY 219 

object more worthy of the combined effort of the 
womanhood of the world could be imagined than this 
of arresting the ever-increasing growth of modern 
armaments. 

Certain it is that if King Demos does not move, and 
if the mothers of the household are indifferent, then 
indeed in the future even more than in the present 
or the past, the word of the situation will be " 'Daten! 
'Daten! " Ever more soldaten! 

Berlin, which has been described by Maximilien 
Harden as Parvenuopolis, and is regarded by the 
Kaiser as the capital of Europe, is in reality the Chi- 
cago of the Old World. It has dethroned Vienna as 
the capital of the Holy Roman Empire as completely 
as Chicago has distanced St. Louis. It now challenges 
the supremacy of Paris with all the arrogance and 
more than the success with which Chicago has 
hitherto disputed the primacy of New York. It is 
like Chicago in many things, but most of all in self- 
confidence and a lordly disdain for its neighbors and 
rivals. 

From this central standpoint of the reconstituted 
Empire the German looks out upon the New World 
with a sort of indignant surprise. The Intelligence 
Department of the Germans is believed to be the best 
in the world. What the German does not know is not 
knowledge. And when the recent war began, the 
German was quite sure he knew all about the way in 
■which it would go. His impartiality was not impaired 
by any sympathy with the Latin race. He held both 



220 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

combatants in equal dislike. Spain had been very 
troublesome, both in Europe and in the Far East. 
The United States had by its food products almost 
ruined the German landed interest. " A plague on 
both your houses." Yet although there was no bias 
of affection to deflect the judgment of the scientific 
expert, he came to a mistaken conclusion every time. 
The naval expert glibly demonstrated with all the con- 
fidence of infallibility that the Americans had no 
chance with the Spaniards on the sea. Alike in ships, 
in guns, in discipline, and in sailors, the Yankees 
would be sorely put to it to hold their own against the 
Dons. As for the military men, nothing could ex- 
ceed their contempt for the United States. " With 
40,000 men," it used to be said, " we could invade 
America." The improvised army of Volunteers was 
a " rabble," and the proposal to rely upon such a 
scratch pack of uniformed civilians seemed little short 
of high treason to the generals who have devoted their 
lives to the elaboration of the German race into a 
cast-iron military machine. It seemed presumption 
to question the conclusions of these oracles. They 
knew everything; they foresaw everything; they had 
decided that the non-military Republic would be 
sorely put to it to best the military monarchy, and as 
they said it, that settled it. 

Hence when the war actually broke out, nearly 
every German newspaper, excepting the Frankfurter 
Zeitung and Die Nation of Berlin, was bitterly, con- 
sistently and continuously anti- American. The atti- 



GERMANY 221 

tude of the Government was scrupulously correct. It 
was absolutely neutral. But the sympathies of the 
nation were as unmistakably anti-American. This 
not only found expression in the press, it made itself 
disagreeably felt in the streets and in business. The 
American felt himself in a hostile atmosphere, and 
sometimes it was more than an atmosphere. This 
hostility was due to a mingled feeling of resent- 
ment, jealousy, envy, contempt, and the antagonism 
that is latent between states based on the opposing 
principles of liberty and authority, of democracy and 
imperialism. 

When the war began and every prediction of the 
experts was falsified, the Germans felt that something 
must have suddenly gone wrong in the constitution of 
the universe. They had all backed the wrong horse, 
relying upon the selections of their own infallible 
prophets, and they felt like losers. It did not sweeten 
their tempers, but they soon began to mend their man- 
ners. In a dazed kind of fashion they endeavored to 
find their bearings, and to regain their equilibrium in 
their new and unaccustomed surroundings. Their 
first instinct, as that of the drowning man, was to 
catch at something, and the flotsam and jetsam of the 
Philippines naturally suggested itself. They hurried 
their warships to Manila with an eye to eventualities, 
but the peremptory " Hands oif ! " from Uncle Sam 
gave them pause. Then they suddenly recollected 
that they had never thought of such a thing. The 
conclusion of peace gave them time to pull themselves 



222 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

together, to put on their thinking cap, and to try to 
size things up. 

And this, so far as can be gathered, is the conclu- 
sion they have come to. The German is a practical 
man who is determined to make the best of a bad job. 
So he is now discovering that the sudden revelation of 
the fighting capacity of the Yankee is, perhaps, not 
such a bad thing after all — at least, for Germany. It 
may, for instance, lead to embroilment with England, 
at the thought of which the German chuckles. He 
lias long warmed his hands at the fire that smoulders 
between Russia and England. If another flame were 
to spring up between England and the United States 
— well, he would be warmer still. 

Then, again, the startling advent of the American 
navy on the high seas as a first-class fighting force 
supplies the Kaiser with a new and irresistible argu- 
ment in favor of adding more ships to the German 
navy. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and 
the disaster that has overwhelmed the Spanish fleets 
may be utilized to increase the effective force of the 
German navy. 

But that is not all. The German practical politician, 
who always judges everything by his estimate of the 
way it will affect himself without reference to its influ- 
ence on his neighbors, eagerly profits by the stimulus 
given to colonialism by the appearance of the United 
States as a Colonial Power. He smiles as he thinks 
how the Americans will discover the fallacy of their 
fond illusions when they seriously begin to equip 



GERMANY 223 

navies, maintain armies, and govern distant millions 
of dark-skinned races. But that is not his affair. 
What he has to do is first to silence the minority in 
Germany — that is, against armies and navies and colo- 
nies — by making the most of the sudden coming over 
of the American nation from a policy of mind-your- 
own-business and cultivate-your-own-garden-in-peace, 
to a policy of military, naval, and colonial expansion. 
America's casting vote, they say, is now given on the 
side of Colonialism and Aggression. 

Secondly — and this is perhaps the more important 
— the blow dealt at Spain by the United States has put 
the Spanish Empire in liquidation. Germany, like 
a smart man of business, intends to be in at the sale of 
the bankrupt stock. She has no intention of quarrel- 
ling with the United States. On the contrary, she 
will be effusively friendly. But she intends to have 
the first choice in whatever is left of Spain's goods 
and chattels after the Americans have had their pick. 
There arem any trimmings left over after your treaty 
of peace is signed. Germany must at any cost acquire 
coaling-stations all round the world. Spain has coal- 
ing-stations to sell. Germany does not intend to be 
forestalled. She has long had an eye on the Caroline 
Islands. There are less probable contingencies than 
a deal by which Germany might at a stroke take over 
the whole wreck of the Spanish Empire in the Far 
East. No one can foresee what kaleidoscopic changes 
may come about in the near future, when the Colonial 
possessions of Spain and also of Portugal seem likely 



224 THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 

to eoinc upon the market to be knocked down to the 
highest bidder. 

The present Emperor is unlike his father in most 
things, but he inherited from his predecessor a haunt- 
ing dread of the immense potentialities of the Ameri- 
can Commonwealth. This dread, which has hitherto 
been chiefly commercial, is now extending to the polit- 
ical sphere. The Kaiser has no love for the Monroe 
doctrine. If the United States cuts the Nicaragua 
Canal, the need for a German coaling-station in the 
West Indian islands will be imperious. Nor is that 
the only possibility of collision between " American- 
ism " and Germany. The German colonists are in- 
creasing in Southern Brazil. Only the other day one 
of them got into trouble for hoisting the German flag, 
and his cause has been warmly taken up by his coun- 
trymen at home. The Government looks askance at 
the enthusiasm which begets societies for the promo- 
tion of Germanism in Brazil, foreseeing complications. 
Mr. McKinley was equally opposed to intervention in 
Cuba, but he made the war notwithstanding. The 
coyness of Governments is apt suddenly to give way 
before the awakened passions of their subjects. If 
the German colonists in Brazil revolt and declare their 
independence, it will not be a far cry, in the opinion 
of eager spirits in Berlin, to the establishment of a 
German Protectorate over the German independent 
States of South America. And in that case the Mon- 
roe doctrine might fail of enforcement unless the 
American fleet were stronger than that of Germany. 



GERMAN! 225 

The chief and immediate rivalry is not in colonies 
but in commerce. In the struggle for the world's 
market Germany is badly handicapped by her military 
burdens and by the comparative narrowness of her 
borders. America she recognizes as her most formi- 
dable competitor, and the contest every day becomes 
more keen. 

The admirable speech made by Mr. White, the 
American Ambassador, at Leipsic on July 4th did 
much to bring the Germans to their bearings. But 
it was significant of much that at that banquet but 
for the direct intervention of the Ambassador him- 
self no German flag would have been displayed. The 
room was draped with Union Jacks and Stars and 
Stripes intertwined. But neither German nor Saxon 
flag was visible. At the last moment a Saxon flag was 
procured, so that the conventions were preserved. 



CHAPTEK IV 

THE MINOR STATES OF EUROPE 

When I was in Rome I had the pleasure of enjoying 
the hospitality of one of the most modern and least 
clerical of Europeans — none other than the famous 
Norwegian novelist, poet and political agitator, Bjorn- 
stjerne Bjornson, who has taken up his winter quar- 
ters next door to the King. If only his Majesty would 
replace the last dozen feet of the monstrously high 
wall which shuts out the Quirinal gardens from the 
views of his Norwegian neighbor by a trellis or a rail- 
ing, M. Bjornson would have no reason to wish to 
change quarters with King Humbert. For he has 
a charming set of apartments, far above the roar of the 
traffic in the street below — apartments which open out 
upon a delightful little garden on the roof, where, 
under the blue sky of Rome, surrounded by sweet- 
scented flowers, the Northern poet can look out upon 
the world as from the eyrie of an eagle. The stout 
Republican does not find the being next-door neigh- 
bors to Royalty altogether to his taste. " We share 
the music of the King's band," he said; " that is pleas- 
ant enough. But the roaring of his lion is less agree- 
able. And he is always roaring." The lion, it seems, 

226 



THE MINOR STATES OF EUROPE 227 

was a gift from King Menelik of Abyssinia to the 
King of Italy. It is kept in the garden of the Quiri- 
nal, where it is as unhappy as the prisoner in the 
Vatican. Day and night the royal brute roars his 
unavailing protest to an unheeding world. But the 
lion, like his namesake in the Vatican, rages in vain 
behind his prison bars. 

I had met M. Bjornson for the first time at the 
studio of his friend and countryman, M. Ross. He 
was in famous spirits, and full of the very latest idea 
that has fascinated this most versatile and quick-witted 
of men. M. Bjornstjerne Bjornson is one of the 
veterans — he is half-way between sixty and seventy, 
and does not seem more than five and fifty — in the 
campaign for peace. He has contended for arbitra- 
tion, for disarmament, for everything, in short, that 
makes for progress, even before the Tsar was born. 
To him, therefore, more than to most men, the Peace 
Rescript was welcome. He was full of interest in all 
that I had to tell him about Russia and her ruler, and, 
like every one else with whom I have had the oppor- 
tunity of speaking on the subject, he rejoiced with 
exceeding great joy on hearing how things stood. As, 
indeed, he had good cause. For everything that 
the friend of peace could hope for is true, and true 
to an extent which neither M. Bjornson nor any 
one else dared to venture would come true in our 
time. 

" But, after all " — for even M. Bjornson has a 
" but " — " But, after all," he said, " I am not very 



228 THE UNITED 8TATE8 OF EUROPE 

sanguine about the Great Powers. They are one and 
all but beasts of prey." I vehemently objected, and, 
indeed, considering how the Peace Conference came 
to be the great hope of mankind, not without cause, 
against such a summary method of classification. But 
M. Bjornson paid no heed to my protest. " I am con- 
cerned," he went on, " about the smaller States, the 
little Powers. What is to come of them at the Con- 
ference ? " " What about the little Powers ? " I asked. 
" Are you not satisfied that they should have been in- 
vited to the Conference? Never before were the 
minor States invited equally with their more powerful 
neighbors to such an international assembly." " That 
is all very well," he replied, " but it is not enough. I 
am anxious to see something more than that. I want 
to see the smaller States group themselves together, 
so as to act and speak with effect. Each by itself can 
do nothing. In a league, or federation, or neutrality, 
they might be a very potent influence in international 
affairs." 

" I entirely agree with you," I replied, " and in Bel- 
gium at the very beginning of my tour I repeatedly 
wrote and spoke urging upon Belgium the importance 
of taking the lead in the matter. It would be a great 
opportunity for the King of the Belgians, who has 
never heretofore had a wide enough field for the exer- 
cise of his statesmanship." 

" Do you think," said M. Bjornson, " that King 
Leopold is the best man to undertake the organization 
of the small States?" "Who else would you sug- 



THE MINOR STATES OF EUROPE 229 

gest? " I asked. " The Queen of Holland is too 
young. The King of Denmark is too old. The Presi- 
dent of the Swiss Federation is not known well 
enough. The King of Portugal has neither the en- 
ergy nor the ambition nor the central position. And 
your King, what about him? " 

" Why do you think it must be a king? " he asked; 
" would not some statesman be even better? " " But 
where will you find your statesman? " I answered. 
Then M. Iloss broke in. " You have not far to seek; 
you will find him in this very city. There is no man 
better than Baron de Bildt, the Minister of Sweden. 
He is a statesman of the first rank, a diplomatist, a 
scholar, and a man who has all the qualities that you 
need." 

M. Poss did not exaggerate the capacity of the 
statesman he named. Three years Baron de Bildt 
declined the Ministerial post offered him by the king, 
which is now held by Count Douglass, and although 
he is but the representative of a small State, no one 
stands higher in the opinion of those who know than 
Baron de Bildt. But postponing for the moment the 
consideration of the man to do the work, I asked M. 
Bjornson what was the work that he wanted him to 
do. " I want," said M. Bjornson, " to secure an 
understanding among the small States before the Con- 
ference meets, so that when the representatives of the 
Powers meet, they will find that they are face to face, 
not with a disunited group of powerless little States, 
but with a federation representing 27,000,000 of 



230 



THE UNITED STATES OF EUROPE 



Europeans, who are determined to act together to se- 
cure their safety, and to obtain a guarantee of their 
neutrality." 

" What States do you mean? " I asked. From his 
reply I have constructed the following table, with the 
aid of the " x\lmanach de Gotha": — 



Population. 

Belgium 6,000,000 

Denmark 2,000,000 

Holland 5,000,000 

Portugal 4,700,000 

Sweden 5,000,000 

Norway 2,000,000 

Switzerland 3,000,000 



Area in 
kil. car. 


Army on 
Peacc| 
Footing. 


... 29,500 .. 


.. 50,000 


... 38,000 .. 


.. 11,000 


... 33,000 .. 


.. 29,000 


... 89,000 .. 


.. 26,000 


...450,000 .. 


.. 39,000 


...322,000 .. 


.. 20,000 


... 41,000 .. 







27,700,000 . 1,002,500 



175,000 



M. Bjornson refused to regard the Southeastern 
States as eligible members for his League of Neutral- 
ity. He said they were full of their own ambitions, 
and some of them at least were by no means contented 
with their frontiers. But it may be worth while not- 
ing the statistics of these States, which have equally 
been invited to the Conference : — 



1 Bulgaria 3,300,000 

2 Servia 2,300,000 

3 Montenegro 230,000 

4 Greece 2,500,000 

5 Roumania 5,500,000 



. 94,000 
. 48,000 
. 9,000 
. 65,000 
.131,000 



. 45,000 

. 23,500 

. 25,000 

. 58,000 



13,830,000 



.347,000 ....151,500 



THE MINOR STATES OF EUROPE 231 

Altogether, the small States represent a population 
of 41,000,000, and an army on a peace footing of 320,- 
000 men, not reckoning the Swiss and Montenegrins, 
every man of whom is trained to arms. 

Clearly, the small States may claim to be regarded 
as constituting a conglomerate of population equal to 
that of any great Power. Their influence in the Euro- 
pean Concert, so far, at least, as the Northwestern 
States are concerned, would be solely for peace. They 
would constitute a most valuable element in the bal- 
ance of power. But will they be wise enough to rec- 
ognize their common interests and bestir themselves 
to make common cause in the Areopagus of the Na- 
tions? Time will show. But it will not be M. Bjorn- 
son's fault if they do not bestir themselves, and that 
without delav. 



WlARi* 18S9 



The 

UNITED STATES 
OF EUROPE 

ON THE EVE OF THE 

PARLIAMENT 

OF PEACE 

BY 

W. T. STEAD 




NEW YORK 
DOUBLEDAY & McCLURE CO. 

1899 



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